SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the marketing process to increase visibility within the organic search results, for the specific purpose of obtaining more traffic for a website.
How Does SEO Work?
Every major search engine such as Google, in particular, has listings of websites that are considered the best in handling answers to queries. For this exercise, they are called search results. Within those search results, the majority of which are made up of what are called organic listings. These organic results are the free listings that the search engines have found, through their analysis, to be the most relevant to the user's query.
When a site is listed at the top of these organic listings, it is the SEO that contributed to this important top listing. What this means is that a significant amount of traffic to a specific site. Therefore, if your business isn't being found in the organic listings, you are missing out on a large percentage of the consumer market.
Getting to the top of the results is where search engine optimization comes in. There are a myriad of strategies used that help to optimize your website, thus competing for keywords that generate revenue.
How Does Google Rank Websites?
According to one major source, "The search engines use automated robots, also known as web crawlers or spiders, to scan and catalog web pages, PDFs, image files, etc. for possible inclusion in their massive indexes. From there, each web page and file is evaluated by programs called algorithms that determine if a file offers enough unique value to be included into the index. If a file is deemed valuable enough to be added into the index, the file or web page will only be displayed in search results that the algorithms have determined are relevant and meets the intent of the user's query. This is the true secret to the success of the search engines. The better they answer a user's queries, the more likely it is that the user will use them in the future. It is generally accepted, as evidenced by the sheer number of their users, that Google delivers more relevant results because of their highly sophisticated algorithms that they are constantly improving. In an effort to maintain their competitive advantage, it is believed that Google makes 500-600 updates to their algorithm each year." Here is an analogy of how SEO is applied. Let's say that a user wants to receive Google News on their tablet. Whenever a user looks up specific types of news events, regardless of the genre, Google utilizes the algorithm to send news about the topics the user had been searching. Thus, the user will receive daily news reports based on what he/she has searched for.
There is so much involved and so many complexities in using Search Engine Optimization these days. But if you continue to work at it, your site may be listed as the number one ranked site on Google. And that is where the money is!
