We’ve made it easy to understand the SEO basics. And start building a strategy that boosts your website traffic.
What Is SEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of improving the performance, experience, and authority of your website so it can gain better visibility in search engines like Google.
Specifically, SEO is about ranking higher in organic (unpaid) search results. Not paid or sponsored results.
Here’s what both types of results look like:
Paid results are results that advertisers pay for through Google Ads. The ranking system is completely separate from the one used for organic results.
Google’s organic results are ranked based broadly on relevance, quality, usability, and context. And are not “pay to play.”
SEO becomes important in the organic results.
Why Is SEO Important?
SEO is important because it can bring more traffic, leads, customers, and revenue to your business. Even basic SEO strategies can deliver a huge return on investment.
There are billions of searches on Google every day. And 45.1% of desktop users click on an organic result, according to Semrush’s State of Search 2023 report.
(Typically, the higher you rank, the more clicks you get.)
By comparison, only 1.8% of desktop users click a paid result. Even though ads are usually at the top of the page.
And when SEO is done right, the results can add up fast.
Amazon got 546.3 million visits from Google users in the U.S. in November 2023, according to Semrush’s Organic Research tool.
It would cost the company around $336.9 million to get that much traffic via Google Ads.
And unlike paid traffic, these organic visitors come in whether or not Amazon is actively running ads.
To be clear: SEO is an ongoing process that takes work. But once you rank for a set of keywords, your rankings typically remain somewhat stable over time.
In short, SEO ensures your brand is visible when potential customers search on Google (or other search engines).