SEO – Search Engine Optimizations

SEO stands for search engine optimization, 

which is the practice of improving a websites visibility in search. 
SEO fits into a larger digital marketing strategy, and 
is more focused on obtaining free organic traffic. 
Other digital marketing roles can work in close alignment with an SEO strategy. 
Other roles within the digital marketing umbrella includes search engine marketing, 
which is the practice forbidding 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 concept 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 will 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 Copywriting. 
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 
gray hat. 
White hat SEO as follows searching and 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. 
Gray hats tend to be somewhere in the middle. 
Black hat SEOs tend to get hit by 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 the SEO, The best way to learn is through 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 of their existence. 
When we refer to search engines throughout the course, we're 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 your eggs in one basket, SEOs and 
clients have a large interest in optimizing for Google, particularly. 
Some SEOs even joked 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 10 organic results here in the middle, along the top and 
side of the search result, you'll see ads. 
These are what search engine marketers focus on. 
These ads been on queries or keywords similar to what we optimize for an SEO. 
So that ad 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 page as well. 
However, we focus on the organic listings. 
Our goal is to get our or our client's 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 website just a few positions in search can boost a website traffic 
significantly. 
Alternatively, it's important to make sure your site is healthy and well optimized, 
so you don't lose positions or traffic. 
The trick, however, is to make sure you are optimizing for 
the right keywords that are most likely to lead to an engaged visitor who converts. 
This will fall into keywords, psychology and research, 
which we will cover an upcoming chapters.