A Guide to Digital Marketing

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
UNDERSTANDING SEARCH
• • • • •
You’ve probably heard the
term SEO more than once or
twice. SEO, or search engine
optimization, is the effort to
improve the quantity and quality
of traffic to your website from users who have
performed relevant searches on search engines.
Basically, it means you didn’t pay directly to show
up on Google, Bing or any other search engine.
While SEO may sound simple enough, there’s
actually a science and an art to doing it right.
THE SCIENCE OF SEO
SEO consists of primarily two types of tactics:
on-site and off-site. On-site includes improving
the content, structure and code on your website.
Off-site includes increasing the links and
mentions of your website and business on other
sites relevant to your business and useful to your
customers.
There’s nothing random about how your
business, or any search term for that matter,
shows up on a search engine. Whether it’s
Google, Yahoo, or something else, search
engines follow an intricate, almost alwayschanging
set of rules and algorithms to rank
your website pages.
Google fields more than 2 million searches
every minute. 11 In today’s digital world, it’s
imperative to know how to increase your
visibility on search engines if your brand is
going to show up in search.
Much of how your web content gets ranked,
and therefore helps you show up in search,
depends on the quality and relevance of the
content. While keywords, proper tagging, and
page structure all play a role, a focus on your
customers and providing them the most relevant
and helpful content is the foundation of a good
SEO strategy.
Over 80%
of customers report
researching a company
online before doing
business with them. 10
For some of the more detailed ins and outs
of how to best set up your website to make it
search-friendly, consult with one of our qualified
marketing advisors.
8 timesunionmedia.com