The Definition of SEO in 100 Words or Less [FAQs]

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seems pretty straightforward. You choose a few keywords and voilà! Your site is optimized for SEO, right?

Not yet.

Many people understand the basic principles of SEO, but a lot has changed in the past decade.

The SEO that we know and love today is not the same SEO that we knew and loved (or hated) 10 years ago. And that’s why marketers should keep redefining and redefining SEO. Here is a short definition in less than 100 words:

What is SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization – so much has stayed the same. It refers to techniques that will help your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). This will make your website more visible to people looking for solutions that promote your brand, product or service through search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing can provide.

What hasn’t stayed the same are the techniques we’re using to improve our rankings. This has all to do with the search algorithms that these companies are constantly changing.

Here are some other frequently asked questions about this critical practice today.

Look deeper: However, there are tons of ways you can improve the SEO of your website pages. Search engines look for elements like title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links (also known as backlinks). And these are just a few examples.

HubSpot customers: You can check the SEO panel on your HubSpot account to see how well you are optimized for these things.

Search engines also study the structure and design of the website, visitor behavior, and other external factors outside of the website to determine how high your website should be in their SERPs.

Look deeper: In search engine optimization today, you can’t just include as many keywords as you can to reach the people who are looking for you. In fact, this is detrimental to your website’s SEO as search engines recognize it as keyword stuffing – or inserting keywords to rank specifically for that keyword rather than answering someone’s question.

Nowadays, you should use your keywords in your content in a way that doesn’t make them feel unnatural or forced. There’s no magic number – it all depends on the length of your keyword and article – but if you feel like you’re forcing it, it’s better to ignore it and keep writing naturally.

Look deeper: Before starting a new site page or blog post, you will likely think about how to incorporate your keywords into your post. That’s fine, but it shouldn’t be your only focus – or even your primary focus. Whenever you create content, that should be your focus intention not how often you can include a keyword (long tail or short tail) in your content.

To satisfy the intent and rank well in the long run, focus your SEO marketing strategy around topics, not keywords. If you do, you’ll find that of course you can optimize for key keywords anyway. Understanding your target audience (also known as buyer personalities) and their interests is key to attracting relevant visitors to your website via search engines.

Look deeper: One of the biggest changes in the last decade is the way that other user behaviors affect the SERPs a user sees on search engines. And today, social media can have a huge impact on your organic traffic trend line. Just a few years ago, it made no difference who found your content using social search. But now SEO takes into account tweets, retweets, Google+ authorship, and other social signals.

Social search also prioritizes content and people associated with you. This can be done through a Facebook friend, a Twitter follower, or a connection through another social network. Sometimes social search even prioritizes content shared by an influencer. Social search understands that you may be interested in content that your network thinks is important to share. As a result, they are often displayed to you.

All of this means that when thinking about your SEO strategy, you need to think about how your social media strategy fits into the puzzle, too.

Look deeper: Think of search engine optimization as “search experience optimization”. Not only is it important that your users find your website, but that they stay on your website, interact with your content, and come back later. Direct traffic not only increases your “page authority” in the eyes of Google. It creates more opportunities to turn someone who first discovered you organically into a customer.

SEO actually takes into account whether your visitors are staying on your website and engaging with other content. If you rank well for a keyword and attract a visitor who is not relevant, it won’t really help your website.

Think about your visitors and the content they are looking for, more than the number of people you can attract to your website.

Look deeper: In the past, SEO success was measured by whether or not you ranked high on the first page of Google. But even if you are ranked well for a tenure, does that actually mean you will see results?

Not always. They might rank really well for terms that aren’t ideal for your business. So you will appear high on search engines, get a lot of traffic, but then your website visitors will realize that your business is not what they are looking for. You’re not converting customers from that traffic, and ranking high for that particular keyword is essentially unsuccessful.

Plus, you don’t necessarily have to be in the top three slots to be successful. If you rank well on the following pages, you may still have a high CTR, albeit less traffic. This is great news for marketers who can’t seem to get pages into these top slots or from second page.

We have already said it and we will say it again: the number of hits on your page is less important than the qualification of those hits.

Look deeper: SEO costs can mean one of two things: investing in your organic search strategy, or how much you pay for paid search engine marketing (SEM) services like Google AdWords. When you pay for a tool, consultant, or marketing agency to optimize your web content, your bill can vary widely depending on the depth of the services you receive.

Yes, $ 10,000 sounds scary, but 40% of businesses today are actually spending less than $ 1,000 a month on SEO.

Look deeper: You can actually pay for top rankings on Google SERPs by signing up for a free Google AdWords account. Then you choose different keywords you want to rank under and pay Google every time a user clicks on your result. This is known as PPC search engine marketing, and your ads will look a lot different from the organic results below.

The average cost of a paid search campaign on Google can be less than $ 1 per click. Of course, the more popular the keyword, the more you can pay.

It’s still the same as it was 10 years ago – a set of tactics that will help you rank better on search engines if you use them. It’s just the tactic we use now that has changed. If you’re new to search engine optimization or want a refresher course, you may be interested in our free SEO training.

It is up to us to stay abreast of the rapidly changing trends and remember that the ultimate goal of search engines is to provide their end users – searchers – with the best experience possible. If you incorporate this goal into your SEO strategy, your decisions will pay off even if you are not up to date on every nuance of search engine algorithms.