SEO Terms: The Essentials
SEO, which is “search engine optimization” for short, is a complex but essential part of the world of online marketing. While it seems pretty straightforward (“you just choose the right words, and your page comes up in searches, right?”), it is actually both more complex and fluid – the truth is that the field of algorithms is constantly changing. SEO has always been a technique (or set of processes) that helps your website land higher on the list when a search engine returns results. To be visible, you want your page closer to the top because people are more likely to rephrase their search than they are to click through to the third or fourth page of search results. While the actual techniques take time for an SEO professional to learn and master, educating yourself on essential terms is a great place to start.
Organic Search
When someone uses a search engine to search for a topic and clicks on a non-paid site listed in the search, keywords play a huge role but don’t simply stuff as many keywords in as you can (a mistake called keyword stuffing). The keywords have to flow naturally and feel organic in your site’s content, or they will hurt your SEO rather than help it.
Organic Traffic
We define this as traffic to your website from search engines, but not any paid-for traffic, such as ads or paid search engine listings. While paid traffic is traffic to your website, it does not contribute to your organic traffic numbers. Online social relationships for this organic traffic can impact your SEO. Search engine algorithms are more likely to show results that connect to the searcher, a Twitter follower, Instagram follower, or Facebook friend. Don’t slack on the social media strategy in favor of SEO – it is all connected.
Direct Traffic
Traffic to your website comes from people directly typing in your URL and not navigating through a search engine or another website (including social media). When you have traffic on your website, their experience there relates to your SEO. If they stay on your site and engage with your content, your SEO for that content improves.
Clickthrough Rate
We define this as the rate of dived clicks by impressions. Impressions are the number of times an ad shows (or your site comes up in a search), and clicks are the number of times someone clicks on it. So if you come up in 100 searches and someone clicks on your link five times, that would be a 5% clickthrough rate. If you can’t get your result any higher than the second page, but your clickthrough rate is still high, you can consider your SEO reasonably successful.
Contact Adventure Web Interactive Today to Enhance Your Website’s SEO
For more tips on how to optimize your web content and drive more traffic to your website, follow our blog. Adventure Web Interactive offers expert marketing solutions, including blog and copywriting and social media management. Take the stress of planning, posting, and plotting off of your team and contact us online or by giving us a call at (410) 788-7007. To see more information about our team and services, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
