Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
Definition
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of online content in organic SERPs to help achieve the goals of your organization.
SEO is a process, so it is not something you do once and forget about. SEO needs constant attention and focus. Your website is not a static finished thing. It’s something that requires constant effort to improve and optimize.
SEO objectives
What can you accomplish with SEO?
It’s important to set objectives before you start doing any SEO work. You should start with establishing a baseline of performance to measure progress against. How is your website currently performing? How much traffic is it getting from organic search? And how many sales or leads is it generating?
We can look at several key metrics to determine SEO success:
- Improve traffic from organic search: Use web analytics to analyze the visits per traffic source.
- Improve sales or conversions from organic search: Again, web analytics will tell us what kind of sales and conversions we’re getting on the website, and what traffic sources those sales and conversions are coming from.
- Improve visibility in search engines: We can do this by tracking how we rank in Google’s organic search results. We can either use a rank tracking tool or use a platform like Google Search Console to see exactly how well our website is performing.
Barry Adams
Barry Adams is the founder of Polemic Digital, which won Best Small SEO Agency at the 2016 UK Search Awards. He has been an active practitioner since 1998 and is co-chief editor for State of Digital. His clients include national brands like EMO Oil and The Sun, multinationals and local businesses.
