Marketing

What is Search Engine Optimization?

In order to make a website’s pages more easily accessible, relevant, and popular for user search queries—and consequently rank higher in search engine results—it is necessary to optimize its technical setup, content relevance, and link popularity. This process is known as SEO, or search engine optimization.

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Through the display of content that satisfies user search requirements, search engines recommend SEO efforts that improve both the user search experience and page ranking. Among other SEO best practices, this entails using pertinent keywords in titles, meta descriptions, and headlines (H1), as well as descriptive URLs that use keywords rather than just a string of numbers and schema markup to define the meaning of the page’s content.

People can find what they’re looking for online with the aid of search engines. Search engines are a common place to start when you need information, whether you’re looking for a restaurant, researching a product, or making travel arrangements. They present business owners with a great chance to drive targeted traffic to your website.

The process of positioning your website to appear higher on a search engine results page (SERP) in order to increase traffic is known as search engine optimization, or SEO. Usually, the goal is to appear on the first page of Google search results for keywords that are most important to your target market. Thus, SEO is as much about knowing your audience’s preferences and requirements as it is about the technical aspects of website configuration.

These are the fundamentals.

How do lookup engines operate?

Any search query a user enters yields results from search engines. They survey and “understand” the vast network of websites that comprise the web in order to accomplish this. They choose which search query results to display by executing an intricate algorithm.

Why Google is the focus of SEO

With roughly 83% of the worldwide search engine market, Google is often thought of when the term “search engine” is used. Since Google is the most popular search engine, SEO usually focuses on optimizing content for Google. It’s helpful to know exactly how and why Google operates.

What Google desires

Google’s design aims to provide users, or searchers, with the optimal search experience. This entails giving the most pertinent results in the quickest amount of time.

The search term (user input) and the search results (output) are the two main components of the search experience.

Since it’s likely that the user will click on the top result and be satisfied with the result, Google views this as a very good search result and a positive user experience.

How Google generates revenue

Google makes money when users value and trust its search engine. It does this through providing insightful search results.

Additionally, Google offers companies the option to purchase an advertisement to appear at the top of search result pages. These listings are indicated by the word “Ad.” When searchers click on these pay-per-click (PPC) ads that you buy through Google Ads, Google gets paid. Specifically, these advertisements will appear for more general queries.

These search results appear nearly identical to other search results, save for the tiny label. Naturally, this is done on purpose because many users click on these results without realizing they are advertisements.

That’s what Google is depending on. Over 80% of the $279.8 billion that Google made in 2022 came from advertising revenue. As a result, even though search functions are still its main offering, it depends on its advertising revenue.

Anatomy of search engine results

Paid and “organic” search results make up the SERPs; Google does not receive any money from the organic results. Rather, Google presents organic results according to how well and relevant it deems a website to be. Google will also display different elements on the SERP, such as maps, images, or videos, based on the type of search query.

What users have searched for determines how many ads appear in a SERP. For instance, if you searched for “shoes,” you probably would find that a good portion of the top results were advertisements. In fact, to locate the first organic result, you’ll probably need to scroll down the page.

Since many shoe companies are willing to pay for a feature in the AdWords results for this query, there’s a good chance that the searcher is looking to buy shoes online, which is why a query like this typically generates so many ads.

However, you will get different results if you search for something like “Atlanta Falcons.” The top results are related to the professional American football team of the same name, as that is the main connection to this search. Still, the question is not entirely clear. Their homepage, a knowledge graph, and news articles are all present. These three types of search results at the top show that Google is unsure of your exact query but offers easy ways to find out more about the team, view their most recent news, or visit their website.

Advertisers are unwilling to bid for the keyword because there doesn’t seem to be any purchase intent behind the query, so there are no AdWords results.

But, if you alter your search term to “Atlanta Falcons hat,” you tell Google that you might be shopping, and as a result, more sponsored results appear in the SERPs.

The function of SEO

Increasing your ranking in organic search results is the aim of SEO. AdWords, shopping, and local results optimization are all done in different ways.

Even though it could seem like the organic listings are pushed down in SERPs due to the abundance of competing elements vying for attention, SEO can still be a very effective and profitable endeavor.

In light of the fact that Google processes billions of search queries every day, organic search results represent a sizable portion of the overall pie. Even though securing and maintaining organic rankings requires some initial and continuous investment, each click that drives traffic to your website is totally free.