What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the process of making your site better for search engines. It's also the job title of a person who does this for a living: We just hired a new SEO to improve our presence on the web.

If you have a website on an automated web hosting platform like Blogger, Wix, or Squarespace, or run a small business and don't have much time to put into your website, it's worth learning the basics of managing your presence in search engines. A little knowledge can go a long way toward helping people find your site.

You can make sure the right people are viewing your content by making your content search-friendly. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of increasing the visibility of website pages on search engines in order to attract more relevant traffic. Learn what you can do to make sure that your site works well with Google Search.

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through non-paid (also known as "organic") search engine results.

Despite the acronym, SEO is as much about people as it is about search engines themselves. It’s about understanding what people are searching for online, the answers they are seeking, the words they’re using, and the type of content they wish to consume. Knowing the answers to these questions will allow you to connect to the people who are searching online for the solutions you offer.

If knowing your audience’s intent is one side of the SEO coin, delivering it in a way search engine crawlers can find and understand is the other. In this guide, expect to learn how to do both.