What Is SEO?

Long answer

Search engines are trying to do one thing, provide relevant results to their users. This means that users will return to the search engine with more questions. Search engines are just algorithms, that read website content and try to understand its meaning.

Having your website SEO’d is just making your code as clear as possible for the search engine to understand. Sometimes there is a misunderstanding between a website’s code and the search engine. The user may click on the result and click away without engaging in the website further. This is interpreted as a ‘false’ result to the search engine and that website may not be as likely to show up for future similar queries.

Bounce Rate

Your website bounce rate tracks how many visitors landed on your website and immediately clicked away. This can be an indication that your website is unclear to search engines.

Keywords

This is a term often used to describe the actual query that users input into the search engine. Examples: “pizza donut near me” or “how do I make my own pizza donut?”

Should I hire an SEO?

Yes, if your website is a template or if it hasn’t been built by a professional website development firm. It also never hurts to have an SEO Professional look under the hood of your website. All Tenth Muse websites are launched perfectly search engine optimized, so there’s nothing you would have to do.

If I get SEO will I rank higher?

Yes and no. SEO doesn’t create high-value web content that engages your target audience. That’s called content writing. SEO also doesn’t guarantee number one search engine ranking. That’s called Paid Ads. It doesn’t find out how your customers are searching for your product nor does it create multiple touch points to educate them and encourage a conversion. That’s just straight up marketing.

SEO isn’t a lead generating magic wand, remember, it’s just communicating your website content to the search engine.

Here’s Google’s advice on finding a good ‘SEO Professional’. They offer a word of caution for anyone trying to game the system. “While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site’s presence in Google or even the removal of your site from our index.”

Stop worrying about what SEO is

There are several marketing strategies to consider besides just SEO. They have been proven to bring in more traffic, increase your organic ranking, and provide more lasting results.

Click here to read about our top five internet marketing strategies.