SEO

Search Engine Optimization

The oldest of the five and still the foundation the other four are built on. SEO is the work of getting a page to appear high in the ordinary list of search results, so that somebody clicks it and arrives on your site.

Goal
A click.
Where it happens
The ordinary list of blue links on Google or Bing.
How you measure it
Rankings, organic sessions, and enquiries that arrive from them.
Status
In use since the late 1990s
What it involves

What the work actually is.

Technical health

The site loads quickly, works on a phone, and can be crawled without obstruction. None of this is glamorous and all of it is a precondition.

Content that deserves to rank

Pages that answer a real question more completely than the pages currently ranking. There is no shortcut around this part.

Structure

Titles, headings and internal links that make the subject of a page unambiguous.

Authority

Other credible sites referencing yours. Earned slowly, and the reason a new domain takes months rather than weeks.

A real example

A San Diego steel fabricator

Somebody types structural steel fabrication San Diego into Google. Ten results appear. SEO is the reason a given fabricator is third rather than thirtieth, and being third is the difference between being asked to bid and never being heard of.

Why it matters

The business case.

Because it still drives the majority of findable demand for most small businesses, and because everything else on this page depends on it. A page that cannot be crawled, loaded or understood will not be cited by an AI system either.

The most common mistake

Treating it as a monthly fee with no defined outcome. Ask any provider what specifically will be different in ninety days and how you will check.

The others

How this compares.

Each of these aims at something different. The comparison page puts all five side by side.

Start here

Want to know why you are not ranking?

Send us the site and the terms you want to be found for. We will tell you what is actually holding it back, which is usually two or three specific things rather than a strategy.

800.274.6775

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