A lot of people have been asking me about SEO, how SEO works and how they can use SEO to grow their business online. Well, that’s a great and spectacular question. SEO is actually a critical component of every digital marketing strategy.

We all know that the most visits sites in the world today are Search engines, social media sites, e-commerce sites, answer sites, news sites and blogs of all kinds. Understanding the role of SEO and how SEO ties up to your overall digital marketing strategy is a key to success.

SEO is simply an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. So from now, I’d like to be using the terminology search engine optimization for clarity sake! The term “Search Engine Optimization” stems from the idea of optimizing, leveraging or making the most of search engines.

What Authority Sites Are Saying

But before we dive deep into Search Engine Optimization, let’s look at what some authority sites say.

“Search Engine Optimization is the process of getting traffic from “free”, “organic” or natural search results on search engines.” –Search Engine Land.

“Search Engine Optimization is simply the activity of ensuring websites can be found in search engines for words or phrases to which the site offers.” –Red Revolution.

“Search Engine Optimization is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”—Moz.

I hope you’re getting a fair idea of what SEO really means?

While I like all  these definitions and it makes sense to me, I still feel that the average person who does not know anything about “ search engine optimization” may not get what search engine optimization really means by these definitions.

So what is Search Engine Optimization?

Well, in its basic sense, search engine optimization is the practice of getting free traffic to your website from Google, Yahoo and Bing. Notice the word “free”!

Its free traffic because you don’t pay a penny to get this traffic to your website as compared to paying for it. So it’s free—organic or natural traffic—because you don’t hype or force Google, Yahoo & Bing to drive that traffic to your website.

Am sure you’re getting it.

Before we dive deeper, I think you have to understand some few terminologies that have to do with Search Engine Optimization.

Here they are:

1. Search Engines
2. Search Queries
3. Search Results
4. Search Engine Rankings
5. Search Engine Result Pages (SERP)

What are Search Engines?

Search Engines are simply sites that display information or answers that people are looking for. See search engines like a calculator, with a button to input data. So when you enter the data, the calculator displays the answer you’re looking for by analyzing what you put inside!

Search Engines do similar work. They provide answers that we are looking for. Some of these search engines are Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask and many more.

What are Search Engine Queries?

Search Queries are the data we enter into search engine bars. Every search engine has a bar where users can enter the kind of data they are looking for. The questions we type into  search engine bars are what is called “Search Queries”.

What are Search Engine Results?

Search Engine Results are simply the answers to the search queries put into search engines. They are the results that search engines display to us for each particular search query we make.

Search Engines have tools that goes to search on the web in a split second and present those answers to us in a form of links arrange in order of their authority, relevance and usefulness based on our queries.

What are Search Engine Rankings?

Search engine ranking is the level, rank or authority of websites on the internet. If you could realize, search engines will often provide you links to other sites which provide the answers you are looking for. So the website they perceive to be more authoritative comes first on their results list with the relevant answer. That kind of ranking for websites is what is called, “Search Engine Rankings!”

What are Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)?

Search Engine Results Pages are simply the web pages that search engines display or show on their “pages” as the best answer to your query. They rank those results as I said early on based on the authority of the site, the relevance of the search query to the site and the usefulness of the content on the site to their user.

 The more authoritative the site, the more its contents shows up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). So the key is to make your website more authoritative by following some simple SEO practices.

Now you know search engines, search engine queries, search engine results, search engine rankings and search engine result pages. So let’s take a closer look at search engine optimization again.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of creating useful and relevant contents on your website, getting more back links to that content, sharing it on various social media platforms and websites over and over again until search engines begin to realize what you are doing, then they show up that content on their search engine result pages so that their users can also benefit from the content on your website, this intend brings you free or organic traffic from the search engines. This is really what SEO—Search Engine Optimization really means in its simplest sense!

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