SEO stands for search engine optimization which is a practice of improving

a web site's visibility and search. SEO fits into a larger

digital marketing strategy. And is more focused on obtaining free or
organic traffic. Other digital marketing roles can work
in close alignment with an SEO strategy. Other roles within the digital marketing
umbrella include search engine marketing, which is the practice for bidding for
paid advertisements and search engines. Social media marketing which
can encompass both free and paid social advertising and
engagement practices. Content marketing,
which focuses on writing content for blogs, newsletters, and more. Public
relations, which focuses
on acquiring relationships and promoting newsworthy content and
other related roles. To fully succeed in SEO, you will need to have a good
understanding
of these disciplines, as well as the ability to work closely with other
marketing roles for your mutual benefit. You'll even discover many
different schools of thought and specializations within
the SEO industry itself. For example, some people like to choose
a specialization such as local SEO, technical SEO or SEO copy writing. While others
like to have a broader
specialization and work in all areas. There's even contention among SEOs
about white hat versus black hat versus grey hat. White hat SEOs follow search
engine
best practices laid out by Google and other search engines while black hat
SEOs tend to go against the grain and participate in what some might
consider manipulative practices. Grey hats tend to be
somewhere in the middle. Black hat SEOs tend to get hit
with penalties more frequently and are known for more churn and
burn approach to SEO. In this course,
we are focusing on white hat tactics that will not result in you getting
penalized or banned from search engines. However I do advocate spending
some time on your own to learn about the different
SEO schools of thought. You may also wish to test various
practices on your own websites as this will help you gain a better understanding
of how search engines and SEO works. With SEO the best way to learn is
do practice and continual testing. During this course we will refer to
search engines quite frequently. The major search engines are Google,
Yahoo, and Bing. Though there are lesser
known search engines. These include international search
engines such as Baidu, which is China's major search engine, Yandex,
which is Russia's major search engine, and Naver, which is South Korea's
major search engine. Unless you are working on
an international SEO strategy and using foreign languages, you won't
work much with these search engines. However, it is important
to know their existence. When we refer to search
engines throughout the course, we are mostly referring to Google. As Google has the
largest market
share out of all search engines. While it's important to know
of other search engines and to not put all of your eggs in one basket,
SEOs and clients have a large interest in
optimizing for Google particularly. Some SEOs even joke that we are not
Search Engine Optimization experts, but Google Optimization Experts. This is
because Google is the most
widely used search engine and has the best market share. In addition, by optimizing
for
Google you're following website best practices that will help
your site rank better across the board. This is an example of a search page
you'll see for the average search. Each page has ten organic
results here in the middle. Along the top and side of the search
result, you will see ads. These are what search
engine marketers focus on. These adds bid on queries or keywords
similar to what we optimize for an SEO. So there add will show up preferably
on the first page of search. When we talk about SEO and
some of the changes that Google makes, it is important to remember that
Google is a for profit enterprise. And these ads are how they make
a great deal of their profits. Like search engine marketers, SEOs want their
website to show
on the first pages as well. However we focus on organic listings. Our goal is to
get our,
or our clients website, to show as high as possible for relevant
keywords within these organic results. It is important to note
how clicks on a result and visits to a website are dramatically
affected by the position of the result. Studies have shown that a little
over 71% of all traffic to a website is visits from the first page of results.
Users are more likely to simply
refine their search query, rather than continue on to
the second page of search results. In fact, these first five results in
the organic listings, bring the highest percentage of traffic, accounting for
approximately 68% of clicks to a website. Boosting a website just
a few positions in search, can boost a website's
traffic significantly. Alternatively, it's important to make sure
your site is healthy and well optimized so you don't loose positions or traffic.
The trick however is to make
sure your optimizing for the right keywords that are most likely to
lead to an engaged visitor who converts. This will fall into keyword psychology and
research