“SEO” stands for “search engine optimization.” As the name suggests, it’s about setting up and improving your website so search engines can find, understand, and rank it more easily.
When someone looks for a website, they usually type a few key words into their preferred search engine. For example, if they’re looking for a restaurant in New York, they might search for “good new york restaurant” or simply “new york restaurant”. SEO helps make sure your website appears as high as possible in the search results for phrases like these.
The exact phrases depend on your niche, what you sell, or the services you offer. Good SEO is about identifying the words and phrases people are likely to type into Google and making sure your site is relevant to them. In the example above, there would be little point in a great New York restaurant having a website if it doesn’t show up when people search for “new york restaurant”.
The challenge is that there are hundreds of thousands of websites online, and many of them may be competing for the same searches. For a phrase like “new york restaurant”, thousands of pages could appear in the results. SEO is the process of improving your chances of outranking those other websites and getting as close to the top of the search results as possible.
Most users tend to click one of the top few results and ignore the rest, so effective SEO can have a major impact on the success of your website. If your business depends on people finding you online, SEO can play a significant role in whether that business succeeds or struggles.
