Search engine optimization is more commonly known as its acronym SEO. Optimization is the basis of all SEO practices. Once your brand’s presence (website, content and social media platforms) is optimized across the internet, you increase its online visibility. Your website will find its way to the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Your online customers will find your business much quicker too.

SEO is the practice of making changes to your online presence, particularly your website, making it more attractive to search engines like Google and Bing. Search engines crawl (or scan) your website to understand what it is about. The best SEO practices make sure it is easy for search engines to understand your website. SEO increases the quantity of organic website traffic and the quality of your site visitors at no additional cost. It doesn’t include any paid media or placement and it excludes direct traffic. With a robust SEO strategy implemented on your website, Google will identify it as an authority site and point users in your site’s direction.

There are subtle differences between the various search engines. However, you can usually focus on Google in your SEO strategy, since most of your target market will make use of this leading search engine. Also, the majority of organic traffic is from Google.

SEO and pay-per-click or other paid media options work together to boost your website and position your brand as an authority in your industry or niche. SEO often gives you a far better return on your investment by comparison to paid media options. That’s not to say that SEO is cheap and easy; it takes a fair amount of time and resources to get it right but it’s long-term rewards are immense and sustainable. Most times, SEO and paid advertising will work together to provide the best results.

SEO is a multifaceted practice that requires many different actions to be taken on a website for it to be optimized for search. Many people correlate SEO with high-quality content as search algorithms have highlighted content as an important ranking factor. Algorithms are looking for content that answers the users’ search intent. If your content speaks directly to your audience, your website will be served up to users by Google. But content alone isn’t good SEO practice. You need links from authoritative external sites pointing to your site in the form of a backlink and these external sites need to have a good domain authority score.

Also, best practice entails full blown on-page optimization which means optimizing your meta content, images and tags. And then, consider the technical aspect of SEO – does your website have great architecture? How’s the User Experience (UX)? Is it easily navigable? And have you made sure to link your pages internally?