What Does SEO Stand For?: A Complete Guide for Beginners

There are well over 1.5 billion websites online right now.

Even though only 200 million of these are actually active, that’s still a lot of competition when it comes to having your page read. Fortunately, you can increase the chances that your page is read over others.

You don’t need to be a professional to implement SEO. But you should at least be able to answer the question “what does SEO stand for?”. In this guide, we’ll tell you that and more.

What Does SEO Stand For?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Simple as that. It’s what it does that you really need to know about.

The goal of SEO is to increase the amount of traffic coming to a website. This is accomplished by a series of strategies and tactics. All of which are aimed at raising the position of a website in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

What Is the Role of Organic Traffic in SEO?

The SEO industry isn’t interested in just any website traffic. It’ specifically focused on increasing organic traffic.

Organic traffic amounts to more than 60% of all online traffic. These are real users that visit your site from the SERP. It’s non-paid, editorial, or natural traffic that found your site after performing a search.

But why is organic traffic important?

As a general rule, the more organic traffic you receive, the higher the conversions you’ll experience. That means that more organic traffic brings you more revenue.

Where Does SEO Take Place?

There are 2 places that SEO for your website is performed.

On-page or on-site SEO are strategies and tasks implemented on your website itself. This includes the content you provide as well as the structure of your site.

The other part of SEO takes place off-page or off-site. These are SEO strategies that are implemented elsewhere on the world wide web but directly affect your website. This includes guest posting and social media.

What’s the Difference Between White, Grey, and Black Hat SEO?

White hat SEO is good SEO. It optimizes your website for search engines while complying with the rules, regulations, and best practices.

Black hat SEO is not good SEO. This implies the use of tricks to increase search engine ranking. These tricks go against the rules and regulations. While not illegal, it can get you kicked off the SERPs.

Grey hat is somewhere between both. When it comes to SEO, taking chances isn’t worth the risk. Google is really good at finding bad content and they’re not shy about removing it.

What Kind of Tasks Are Involved in SEO?

There are countless tasks and strategies for SEO. Below we’ve listed some of the most common and effective:

• Social Media. A strong social media presence and the following can boost your ranking on SERPs. Post shareable content regularly.
• High-quality content. Posting content isn’t enough. Your content should be of high value to your target audience. It should also involve keyword research. This helps search engines return your page when users search for terms you’ve used.
• Link building. When websites other than your own link back to you, it gives you more authority. Higher authority pages rank higher than those with low authority. It also gives you an opportunity to speak to a whole new audience.
• Site structure. This includes ease of navigation, aesthetics, and functionality. The architecture of your site should be designed with usability in mind.

Are You Ready to Increase Your Website Traffic?

In today’s world, digital marketing is a necessity. Knowing the answer to “what does SEO stand for” is the bare minimum of being successful in the digital age. If you have a website, you need SEO.

Now that you know exactly what SEO does and how it can benefit you, are you ready to increase the organic traffic coming to your site? We can help with that. Check out our blog for tips and advice.