Search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of the most critical aspects of your digital strategy. In a nutshell, SEO is how you tell search engines to find your content, and coincidentally, how you connect customers to your brand online. We’re just going to talk about the basic principles of SEO today, so that in future videos, when we really dive in to building a keyword strategy or setting your website taxonomy, you’ll already have a pretty good idea of what we’re talking about.

To best illustrate the SEO process, I think it helps to begin with the end in mind. What is the goal of all of this? It’s connecting customers to your brand when and where they need you. It’s why you have a website, and what good is having a website if your customers can’t find it?

So how do customers find your website? They search for it. How? They use search terms in a search engine that displays results on a search engine results page, or SERP.

Let me show you what I mean…

We’re going to use Google today, because they pretty much wrote the book on search, and if Google likes your website, chances are the other search engines are going to as well.

I’m going to search for “flower delivery Richmond va”, playing the part of a customer looking for a florist that delivers in Richmond, Virginia. Really quickly, let’s discuss the anatomy of a SERP.

Up here is the Google Search Network results, also referred to as AdWords. The websites up here have all paid for this placement, using the keywords that we searched for as part of a campaign. We’ll discuss AdWords in a future video.

Next is the Google Local search results, showing all of the local businesses that have registered their business listing with Google, in the geographic location that you searched for.

Finally, we have the organic search results, where we really find out whose website is optimized for the search terms that we used. Vogue Flowers is first, followed by Pat’s Florist and then Coleman Brothers. Vogue and Coleman Brothers and both SAF members, which is exactly what I like to see.

So how did Vogue come up first organically for this search? Good SEO. SEO is identifying search terms through keyword research and analysis, developing a strategy to create quality content that uses those keywords and then formatting your website to correctly and logically house this content. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for search engines to connect your content with the people who are searching for it, your customers.

From there, we’ll introduce more advanced concepts like link-building and 301 redirects, but what it all comes back to is how your website it formatted for search engines to find. Content might be king, but don’t forget about the kingdom. So that’s where we’re going to begin in the next installment with a down and dirty guide to performing an SEO audit on your website.

Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you right back here next week. Goodbye!