What Is Search Engine Optimization

W hat is Search Engine Optimization? SEO, for short, is a method to improve search engine findability.  The abbreviation SEO stands for the English term “Search Engine Optimization”. SEO pursues the goal of having your own relevant content appear in prominent positions in the search results.  Search engine optimization can be operated for all search engines. The focus is on optimization for Google for this article because other search engines such as Bing or Yahoo play a relatively minor role in the optimization. Therefore, the focus of the following text is on the Google search engine.

Why SEO?

Actively doing SEO not only means investing a lot of time in research, market analysis, and optimization but also continuously and precisely informing yourself about the latest trends and Google updates.  With Google updates of various dimensions taking place several times a year, this represents a challenge that should not be underestimated. If time and effort is invested, however, enormous opportunities can arise.

For most companies, search engines are the most important channel for attracting users to their own website.  The users who arrive at a website via search engines also usually intend to carry out a desired objective of the website. This goal depends entirely on the intention behind the search and can, for example, only be information or even the purchase of a product.

SEO also plays an important role in acquiring new customers, as search engines are often the most important source for bringing new users to a website using generic search terms.

Ongoing search engine optimization can ensure the long-term success of a website without investing permanently in paid advertisements. Good SEO optimization can pay off over the years, as it gives you authority in your field, increases brand awareness, and overtime is seen by Google and its users as a reliable source of information.

SEO and SEA in Comparison

SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising, i.e. advertising in search engines. The main difference between SEA and SEO is that for an optimal ranking in the Google search results you have to pay a fee to the operator of the search engine, whereas with SEO, the good ranking results from the quality of the website.  Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is usually used as a generic term and is a combination of SEO and SEA.

Key Figures of SEO

The success of an SEO strategy can be recorded by a large number of key figures, which are of different importance depending on the goal of the campaign. Important key figures are, for example:

• Click-Through-Rate (CTR): This key figure shows how many users who were shown the page in the SERPs actually visited it.
• Bounce rate: states how many users leave the domain after visiting a single page.
• Average session duration: The more satisfied the user is with a page, the longer he or she stays on a page.  The type of content can play a big role.  If the dwell time is very short (~ less than 30 seconds), this could be due to the quality of the page.
• Number of backlinks: Which and how many external websites are linking to a page is used as an indication of whether this page is perceived as relevant and of high quality.

How Does SEO Work?

Search engine optimization is all about organic search results. This means that paid ads on the respective search engine are excluded. In this respect, you don't pay a fee to improve the ranking of a website but make it attractive for users and search engines in order to achieve a good ranking. A distinction can be made between the off-page SEO and the on-page SEO in the classic search engine optimization. 

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO describes those tasks of search engine optimization that consist of technical, content and structural adjustments to a website. The aim of OnPage optimization is to ensure that a webpage complies with the standards of search engines and that it creates useful and good content for potential users.

The Right Keyword

Before you even create content, you should get an overview of potential search queries. To find out the search volume of a search query, there are a few tools that can help. It is important to determine the so-called user intent, the motivation for the search query from the user's point of view.  This is decisive for the ranking potential of the planned content.

So, now you know what is search engine optimization, and can use it for your own benefit too!

• This post is tagged in:

• SEO
• Google Search engines