SEO 101

By: Lauren Williams

Are you curious about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Well if you’re interested in a career in marketing, you should be! SEO is crucial for any business to connect with its customers online. It is defined as “the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through non-paid (also known as "organic") search engine results” (Moz). That definition is a lot to consume… let’s break it down.

Side note: I will be explaining SEO in terms of using Google as your search engine.

Imagine you’re googling “best Christmas gifts 2021” (yes, I’m already in the Christmas spirit). After searching, ads are always going to pop up at the top of your page. This is thanks to businesses utilizing Google Ads – which differs from SEO because you have to pay for ad space. If you scroll a bit down, you’ll see your first, second, third, etc. search results. Why do these websites get the first spot on the page? It’s due to those companies utilizing Google’s best ranking strategies and search engine optimization. When you search anything, Google does its best job to match your search with the most relevant results. 

Why is SEO important?

It has been found that organic (unpaid) search engine results get about “20x more traffic opportunity than PPC (pay-per-click)” (Moz). Companies want to have great SEO to get more website traffic AKA more sales; Google wants their search results to be as relevant as possible to you in order to get consumers to come back to use their search engine over its competitors. If Google can provide great search results that ease the consumer experience, everyone wins!

How can businesses improve their ranking on Google?

One of the easiest ways businesses can organically increase their spot (ranking) on the Google search page is by utilizing keywords. Ok… what are keywords? Keywords are strategic search terms that you want to rank for in the search results on Google. When it comes to ranking for keywords, you want to make sure that your keyword research and strategy make sense for discoverability and relevance alike. For “best Christmas gifts 2021”, keywords could be “Christmas gift(s)”, “best Christmas gift(s)”, or “best gift(s)”. These keywords should be included in a headline, URL, and description text of a Google search result for optimal ranking.

There’s a TON of keyword research and details to dive into; this only covers some basics. Some keyword research tools you can try out include Ubersuggest, Google Trends, and Keyword Surfer. 

Long story short, Google is a vastly multi-layered place for businesses to compete for ranking space on the front page. There is a list of over 200 ranking factors Google uses in their algorithm to rank results. To learn more about SEO, Hubspot also has a great SEO-specific course here. Google Ads is also a helpful start to learn some more basics of online marketing, including paid ads.