Why is SEO Important?

People use keywords to interact with content online, and most online experiences start with a search (Forbes 2017). As we will soon see, people turn to search engines for a wide variety of reasons, and these reasons provide opportunities for your firm to show up when people are searching for something.

Ranking high in search engines also confers a competitive advantage. In 2015, the first spot on Google received 35% of the traffic for a specific search. More than 50% of the traffic went to results located on the first result page (Advanced Web Ranking 2015). Search matters for physical stores, too, and local searches lead 76% of mobile visitors to visit stores within the day. Of those visits, 28% resulted in a purchase (Google 2016). SEO also matters because most people ignore paid ads (User Centric 2011). Clearly, ranking high can benefit a firm: Being well ranked provides a clear advantage over competitors.

In order to understand how to rank high, it is important to understand how Google works. Let’s watch the following video from Google: