What is SEO and Why It's Important for Your Business

Introducing our brand new series all about SEO! You'll learn foundational things that you can easily implement in your business even if you're a complete beginner. We brought in SEO expert, Mariah, to break things down for you.

What is SEO?

Understanding what SEO & why it's important is one of the foundational building blocks. If you don't get how it works, the whole thing is gonna be a mystery.

So let’s kick this off with the basics, shall we?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine = Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.

Optimization = maximum efficiency. 

So when you’re implementing SEO on your website, you’re trying to optimize it in a way that search engines can understand, so they show YOUR website & the pages on your website, in search results.

(NOTE: Us SEO folks usually only mention Google when we talk about SEO because Google has the biggest market share but there are other search engines out there like Yahoo! and Bing. When you’re optimizing your site for Google, you’re also optimizing for the others too.)

SEO helps you get free and organic traffic from search results on search engines. Compared to paid ads, which are typically shown at the top of Google search results. (Paid ads usually have “sponsored” next to them)

53.3% of all web traffic comes from organic search. Only 27% comes from paid search. (Source)

How do search engines work?

Google has little robots that go through and crawl the web. 

These robots are also referred to as "spiders". 

What do they do? They take note of websites and the content that’s on them. 

They're always out there, finding new content, and checking in on old content so that they can help keep Google results as "fresh" as possible. 

So when they get to a page on your site, they scan the content to try to get an idea of what the main idea is so they can put it into Google’s Index. 

Google’s “index” is basically a big ass filing cabinet with literally every website accessible on the internet in it. 

BUT, that’s millions of websites. So the search engines need some system to organize that filing cabinet and understand “who” goes “where”. (For example, you won’t find gardening and make-up websites in the same “filing cabinet” folder.)

So basically when we all go & search Google for something, it’s like Google goes into the filing cabinet and pulls out what it thinks best matches what you searched for, based on the words you used to search.

(And the words you used to search = “keywords” or a “query”)

How does SEO work?

Google bots crawl your website to pick up on context clues about what your pages are about.

And these context clues revolve around the WORDS that are on your website.

Keywords are the piece of the puzzle that connects YOUR website, to people’s searches.

Once the bots know which KEYWORDS are associated with your website, they’ll run your website through the “algorithm” which is basically judging your website on over 200+ factors so they can determine WHERE you should be organized aka WHICH page and position you should be in on search results.

THIS is why SEO gets the reputation that it’s overwhelming, super technical, and takes 6+ months in order to get results.

Because SEO IS layered. It IS nuanced. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it type of thing. It can’t be. Because it’s all an experiment based on educated decisions and testing.

But the good thing is, you don’t actually have to get everything perfect to get results. 

It’s ACTUALLY more about infusing SEO-friendly habits into the things that you’re already doing and being strategic with how your website is set up.

But the important thing to keep in mind is, what it takes to get on page #1 all depends on the KEYWORD that you’re trying to target.

The more competitive the keyword, the more things you’ll have to get *right* in order to rank. 

The less competitive the keyword, the fewer things you have to get right in order to rank.

This is why SEO people say “try to find a keyword that has a high search volume, and a low competition/difficulty score”.

Why is SEO important? Why should you care?

• Your audience is already looking for the solutions you offer. By focusing on SEO & doing effective keyword research, you can get Google to recommend you & your website as that solution.
  --> 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine (source)
  
  
• In terms of marketing, it's one of the only website traffic strategies that give you long-term results.
  -->The average page ranking in the top 10 organic results is over 2 years old. (Source)

• SEO continues to build on itself IF you do it correctly (unlike social & ads)
  
  
• Traffic from search engines tends to convert better because the user is specifically looking to find a solution to a problem that they have. And when the search engine can deliver wonderful solutions to that problem, the user is more likely to take action.
  -->B2B businesses generate 2x as much revenue from organic search than all other channels combined. (Source)

Think about it.

As a user, when you want to find a solution, where do you go?

When you have a question, where do you go to find an answer if you don’t want to bother your mom, again…

It’s usually a search engine.

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Love this? Continue with the rest of the SEO Series below!

Glossary of Common SEO Terms

Your Foundational SEO Checklist

How MemberVault Stacks Up with SEO

How to Know if Your SEO Strategy is Working

Ways to Continue to Optimize Your SEO

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This SEO article series is written by SEO expert, Mariah. Want to learn more? Check out the additional resources below!

⚡️ Mariah's YouTube channel has a ton of free tutorials: https://youtube.com/@MariahMagazine 

⚡️ Free SEO Tools Masterlist: https://mariahmagazine.com/seo-tools (If you want an inside look at the SEO tools that I use on the regular)

⚡️ Free Blog post SEO checklist: https://www.mariahmagazine.com/seo-checklist-for-blog-posts/ (If you’re creating blog posts for SEO)

⚡️ SEO Keyword Research Workshop (Use code MEMBERVAULT for 20% off!): https://www.mariahmagazine.com/seo-keywords-workshop/