SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is not some complicated form of digital marketing witchcraft. SEO just means making Search Engines such as Google like your webpage the most for a search.
If someone searches for cheese, then Google tries to show them a list of pages about cheese that will please them the most. If you have a webpage about cheese, then Search Engine Optimisation is how you get your webpage to the top of the list that Google shows people.
You can do this in a variety of ways – all of which are broadly covered in this guide. Search Engines are forever tweaking how they work so that they give better results, however, so no guide will ever cover absolutely everything. We will endeavour to keep adding to this guide however to give you the best information we can.
Note: This is just a top-level guide. If you have anything to add, please get in touch at justin@theonlineadvertisingguide.com
Index
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Summary
Why include SEO in a guide about online advertising?
While they work in similar ways, Search Engine Optimisation does not include using Paid Search ads.
SEO is all about making your website rank highly in search engines naturally – without paying. Having said that, Paid Search and SEO go hand in hand . Doing both together works better than doing either one separately.
This is because success on search results pages often comes down to taking up as much space as possible. If you have both a paid search ad and an organic search result at the top of a page then you are far more likely to get a click than either one alone.
Next: What is SEO?