What is SEO, and why do I need it?

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​SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and is a set of practices that help websites rank higher in search results. The goal of SEO is to get traffic from organic search results, which can include web pages, images, videos, local business listings and much more. When a website ranks higher in search results, more people will see it.

SEO is no longer confined to search engines like Google or Bing. It’s also important for social networks such as Facebook and TikTok as people turn to social media to find information.

How do search engines work?

Search engines use crawlers (also known as spiders or bots) to gather information across the internet to populate their big databases, called “indexes”. Crawlers begin from a known web page and then follow links from that page to other pages.

There are three main categories of SEO, all of which combine to help search engines discover, crawl, index, understand, and rank your content:

On-Page Optimization: is the process of ensuring the content on your site is relevant and provides a great user experience. It includes targeting the right keywords within your content and can be done through a great content management system like Wix.

This includes making images, headings, main body copy, meta description tags, title tags, blogs etc.

SEOptimer, SEO SiteCheckup, and MozBar are free SEO tools that can be used to scan the HTML of a web page and identify important on-page elements, allowing you to quickly check whether the page has been optimized or not.

Technical Optimization: Technical Optimization is the process of completing activities on your site that are designed to improve SEO but are not related to content. It often happens behind the scenes. A simple example of technical optimization is submitting your sitemap to Google. 

Off-Page Optimization: is the process of enhancing your site’s search engine rankings through activities outside of the site. This is largely driven by backlinks, which help to build the site’s reputation. 

The more backlinks a page or domain has, the more authoritative it may seem to Google. Especially if those backlinks come from domains that are authoritative themselves.

There are apps to help with this such as Semrush and MOZ.