Simply put, SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. This is a term in digital marketing that involves the adjustments and changes made to a website so that Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., can make it pop up and be visible in search results. In simpler terms, it is improving your site to increase the visibility in relevant search queries. Different terms may come up when speaking of SEO. Of all the terms, ranking is the most crucial. All of the SEO done on websites is to improve the ranking of such sites. The higher the ranking, the more visible the website becomes. With good search engine optimization for your website, when people search for your content, service, or product, the search engines should show your site as one of the results -at least on the first few pages. SEO is crucial for any website on the internet because of the psychology behind a simple search. When people search things on Google, they trust that Google has the right answers to their questions/queries. If your web pages or content are consistent as relevant solutions or answers to these queries, you tell the users that they can trust you as well!

To understand how SEO works, one must know how search engines work. Whenever search queries are inputted into Search engines like Google and Bing, they ‘crawl’ the entire web using autoboots, which collect information from various websites and arrange them in an index. In the index, various methods of analysis are employed to arrange the results into an order. Various factors determine the order. These factors can be broadly divided into 2, On-page SEO ranking factors and Off-page SEO ranking factors. On-page SEO focuses solely on your website. These factors are completely in your control. The common ones are navigation bar layout, page titles, content, mobile-friendliness, and other factors that aid usability of the website. On the other hand, off-page SEO involves your online presence and includes factors that are outside your control. The common one is backlinking and links sharing when you create content or have products that people share online or refer to on other websites.

To get started with SEO, one must know that SEO does not occur overnight. It is a process that takes some time, but with these steps, you will make good progress with your SEO plan. 1.Make your website as user friendly as possible. The more user-friendly your site is, the easier it is for Google and other search engines to rank your site. User-friendliness deals with navigation, placement of pages, content arrangement, correct links, mobile site adaptability, and page loading speed. When all of this is set and adjusted to give the best user experience, you can get better SEO rankings. 2.Create a good social media presence. Search engine algorithms now use social media to rank search results. A lack of such accounts will get you lower ranks on search results. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are recommended especially for businesses. A Google My Business account also helps to rank well when searching. In recent times, prospective customers or users also use social media as a tool to vet the legitimacy of businesses. 3.Prioritize Off-page SEO. When you have backlinks of quality content on your website, or when your website is linked on other sites as an ‘authority,’ you have higher SEO ranking. These search engines see you as a source of legitimate information or products, making your site more visible to relevant searches.

SEO is very crucial because it is the method by which search engines determine the websites that will rank high for search queries placed on their platforms. Modern SEO analytics and algorithms make it very difficult to manipulate or falsely adjust the search results. It is why a good SEO process must be done by an SEO expert and over some time. SEO is also key because it serves as a leveller of search results and keeps them very fair. With the modern SEO methods, sites that rank high do so because they are well and truly deserving of their place on the search results. So, when you see a site ranking consistently high with a given query, a visit to the site offers the service’s quality and the site is very user-friendly. SEO is built on the credibility of the website content, product, or business in general. This is because of the trust that billions of search engine users have in the search engines. If your website is on the top spot or on the first page of the search results, it signals to web users that you have been tested and trusted to deliver on the query that is being made. This increases web traffic to your site and, in turn, improves your ranking. Win-win. SEO (if done well) is a great alternative to paid advertising and other aggressive marketing techniques. In the long run, and when on a very lean budget, SEO is more cost-effective and will yield more consistent results in the long term.

The simple answer to this question is YES. As long as your business is online, SEO is important for you. You may feel the need not to do SEO because you already rank high on search engines or because you barely have any competition online, but you will be wrong. Whether new or old, booming or struggling, big or small, you need SEO regardless of your business situation or state. Your industry is not a limitation. Whatever industry you find yourself in, SEO is very useful for you as long as you are online. SEO is one of the factors of your online business that you have some form of control over. With this control, you can influence your web traffic, sales, and ultimately maximize your profit. If you invest in your website’s SEO, you are investing in your website’s visibility, and thus increased access to your business. This ultimately translates to increased profit.