What Does SEO Stand For?

on Ecommerce • January 18th, 2022

Even in 2023, we regularly meet business owners and site managers who don’t know what SEO is all about. Sure, they understand that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, but they aren’t sure what optimizing for search engines means or what that looks like.

If you are one of these folks who want to understand what SEO stands for, then this post is for you!

For over ten years, as an SEO company we’ve taught people what SEO services look like and helped them grow their organic online presence by using it, sometimes combining it with other channels like Facebook and other social media channels. We understand what it’s like to not know about search engine optimization and our hope is that this post will give your business the foundation you need to start your own SEO journey and improve your digital presence.

Some Deeper Reading On SEO:

What Does SEO Stand For?

As we mentioned before, SEO stands for search engine optimization. Basically, SEO is the process of helping search engines understand your website by making adjustments to your pages and other parts of your site.

Believe it or not, search engines actually “read” your website! The programs search engines use to do this are called “crawlers.” These programs click through your links, read image alt text, check your social buttons, and do their best to make sense of the message you’re communicating. This organic process ensures that search engines can connect your site with people that are looking for what you’re selling.

If Google’s crawlers start to think that your site is a good match for people, then they will rank your business higher and boost organic traffic to the pages on your site. Alternatively, if the crawlers feel that you don’t answer the questions or offer the products your audience is looking for, then they will place you lower.

Unfortunately for people trying to rank on Google, it can be really tricky to figure out how crawlers grade websites. Fortunately, though, there are people, like our team here at Fannit, who have dedicated decades of their lives to learning how search engines work and want to help companies do a great job.

This is why we’ve decided to share these SEO basics and tell you how they come into play!

More Helpful Reading: SEO Tutorials for Beginners

What Does SEO Look Like?

Search engine optimization encompasses a variety of actions that improve the rankings of your site in search results.

SEO has two sides:

  • Crawlers: This side focuses on the science of determining how crawlers think, what they want to achieve, and optimizing your pages for their little robotic brains.
  • People: This side is all about improving your site for what its human visitors want. After all, you’re trying to sell your human readers and social media users, not Google’s robots.

At the same time, by optimizing your site for search engines and people, you will give your rankings a boost. If you do it right you can start getting listed on the first page of Google — the golden place to be, as the first page of this search engine, captures 71% of search traffic clicks!

However, getting to the top spot of any search engine requires a huge amount of work and effort, so you need to set yourself up for success from the beginning.

SEO is a Never-Ending Journey

One of the most important things you need to remember is that SEO is a never-ending journey, so you constantly have to make time for search engine optimizations. There is a direct link between technology, the content on your pages, consumer behavior, and the keywords used, so you always have to be on top of the newest trends to prepare your website.

More Helpful Reading – How to Improve SEO

Technology, in particular, has proven to be a key factor every time

There is a direct link between SEO and the technology that is being developed around this practice.

The development of mobile devices, which are now the most popular way to access the web, completely changed the way search engines generate search results rankings. Today, new practices are gaining traction, so optimizing a site for this type of search result can become a major part of your strategy in the future.

Moreover, search engines like Google constantly create new methods and improve the way they index and rank websites. You have to be aware of new updates as they roll out. Sure, some of these may be minor. But, every now and again, there is a major search engine update that can seriously affect your ranking, especially if you’re unprepared or have outdated content.

Key SEO Tactics

Landing your site on the front page involves a combination of SEO tactics, a social media plan, and strategies that we’ll share with you below. Among other SEO basics, here are three of the most important parts of your website that need to be optimized in order to reach the front page of search engines like Google.

1. Organizing Your Site’s Architecture

As part of your search engines’ optimisation efforts, you have to improve the architecture of your entire website. It’s important that the menus, links, and organization of your site flow in a logical and intentional way. A disorganized website will motivate readers to exit (damaging your rankings) and will confuse crawlers (also damaging your rank), so make sure you optimize your site in advance.

An easy tip for improving your site’s architecture is to have relevant internal links placed in your content. This way readers are led to click through multiple pages of your site and, if you do it right, are funneled to the product or service that your business is selling. This, in turn, will also boost your search engine optimisation efforts.

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2. Backlinking from Quality Websites

One of the big ways that Google determines the rank of your website is by reading the links pointing to your site from other websites. These are called “backlinks,” and Google considers the quality of these links a clue towards determining the quality of your own site.

If spammy or low-quality websites are linking to your site, then the search engines will assume that your business site is spammy as well. Alternatively, if your website has incoming links from reputable sites, then Google will think that you are a high-quality site too.

So, a crucial step in SEO is disavowing bad backlinks to create better ones. After this step of your site’s optimization, search engine quality scores should start going up.

3. Focus on Content Marketing

If you want to improve your ranking in the top search engine, optimize the content on your site. Two more things Google considers when ranking your website are:

  • How long people stay on your site (i.e. retention rate).
  • How many people visit your site each day (i.e. traffic rate).

Content marketing improves both of these things by creating well-written content that keeps people reading (improving your retention rate).

Regularly releasing content such as blog posts that feature the right keywords and answer the questions your ideal customers are asking and distributing them through social media (driving more traffic through Facebook and other platforms) can have a huge impact on your business. Even if you don’t think social media can help you reach your audience, there is always an online platform that can help spread your content and bring you closer to your potential clients.

Helpful Reading: What is SEO Content?

4. Optimize the Site’s Loading Speed

Although all aspects of user experience and on-page content are essential, your website’s loading speed will determine if visitors actually see your content or if they simply leave your site. In an ideal world, your site should load in less than 5 seconds. As more time passes, more users will hit the back button, return to the search engine, and find a website with faster loading speed.

There are many elements that affect your site’s loading speed. The website’s architecture, media formats, social feeds within your site, and the amount of information on the pages will all influence how fast it loads. Additionally, the hosting provider has a big impact on loading speed, which is one of Google’s most well-known ranking factors.

You want to make sure to take your time before choosing a hosting provider. In addition to speed, look at their average downtime (the less, the better), customer support quality, backup features, and security capacities.

More Helpful Reading: Top 9 SEO Metrics to Monitor

5. Ensure that Your Business Has a Mobile Website or Responsive Site

Research conducted in 2018 estimated that more than 52% of all web traffic was generated via mobile devices. As a matter of fact, Google has been conducting mobile performance tests before indexing and ranking each site since 2016.

In simple terms, this means that having a mobile or responsive website is critical to reel in more traffic through SEO. Consumers are using mobile devices to search for information more than computers, so your website should have content that’s visible on smartphones and similar gadgets as well.

Unfortunately, many companies and site managers haven’t optimized their content or any part of their platform for mobile traffic, which hurts their chances of appearing on the first page. Creating a mobile version may be a challenging mission, especially for companies on a tight budget.

Responsive website designs are a great alternative that allows your site to resize and rearrange the information on your site according to users’ screen size. Not only does this optimize readability, but it also improves loading speed and helps users navigate your site easily. And, these designs let you optimize the keywords on your site to target mobile searches as well.

6. Pay Attention to Meta Data and Other Details

When building or optimizing a website for SEO, you need to keep dozens of small factors that affect the overall performance of your site. For instance, meta titles, meta descriptions, page URL, the use of headings, creating a sitemap, and other elements will all help determine your ranking as well as speed and other areas.

Meta titles and meta descriptions are particularly important because they also entice users to click on your site. Your title should have the right number of characters, including the keyword, and be relevant to the content of the page. Likewise, meta descriptions should meet the length requirements, include the main search term, and describe what the page is about.

7. Master Keyword Research

Despite the fact that this practice falls under the mantle of content marketing, you have to let yourself get familiarized with effective keyword research techniques can also make a world of difference.

There is much more to keyword research than finding relevant keywords. You also need to identify what competitors are doing, locate variants that apply to your niche, discover the type of content that attracts your audience, and find the keywords your business can realistically compete for.

Having the right tools at your disposal will also influence the success of your term search. Instead of opting for any research tool, make sure you select a known platform that provides accurate results. Some marketers use multiple tools and cross-reference the search engine results page (SERP) to get the most accurate data.

With this in mind, regardless of the tool you pick, you have to get familiar with the interface and learn how to use its features to your advantage.

Helpful Reading: What is SEO Reputation Management?

What Does SEO Mean In Your Marketing?

In addition to knowing what SEO stands for, you also need to know what it means to your marketing plan. SEO will look slightly different for each website. Some companies may need to create a roster of high-quality backlinks, while others are better off focusing the bulk of work on their site’s content.

How do you know which SEO strategies are best for your business?

The trick is to invest in solid competitor and audience research so that you can tailor your SEO strategy to the niche of the internet that you hope to rank in. This will help you create a plan that will improve your search engine results rankings gradually.

You could try to do this research yourself via email and other means, but we would recommend partnering with an experienced Portland SEO agency that has access to the tools and knowledge required to build a dependable SEO strategy. If you have any questions contact us and we can help your business through your site’s SEO.

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Ryan Griffin

10+ Years Experience in Leading Digital Marketing. My specialties: Enterprise Tech, IT Service Providers, Health, Law, Home Services; Local and National SEO, PPC, Paid Social Media Marketing, Inbound Marketing & Sales Enablement, Growth-Driven Website Design. Connect with me on LinkedIn >