Search Engine Optimization belongs to a subset of Internet Marketing named Search Engine Marketing - the promotion of websites to search engines.
There are two forms of Search Engine Marketing: Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click Advertising. Search Engines provide results to search queries in two different ways:
Search Engine Optimization - commonly abbreviated SEO - is the art and science of allowing search engines to find your website and list it high in the natural or organic portion of search engine result pages (usually called SERPs) queries, whereas;
Pay Per Click Advertising is the act paying search engines per visitor (click) received via advertisements which are placed on SERPs. These ads are called "sponsored links" or "sponsored ads”.
Paying for natural or organic search results is not possible, and having free advertisements is not possible. This helps ensure the integrity and value of search engines.
So in a nutshell, SEO means to get your website to appear to people in the organic, natural, or regular section of SERPs when they use search engines to look for you, your general field, your services, or any other search terms valuable to your company.
Search Engine Optimization is often the most favored form of internet marketing, let alone Search Engine Marketing. This is due to SEO usually generating the most traffic and therefore conversions out of any other form of Internet Marketing, in addition to the fact that the traffic it generates is completely free, as opposed to PPC advertisements.
While anyone can pay for advertisements to appear on the first SERP for certain queries; getting websites to appear organically tends to be far more valuable. This is not only due to natural/organic search results being free, but also because searchers choose to click the free links far more often than the paid advertisements. Pay Per Click advertisements do commonly yield higher conversion rates than those of organic visits (due to better targeting capabilities of direct advertisements), but PPC simply does not offer the same volume as organic listings.
Research shows that organic search results actually account for approximately 70% of all traffic from search engines, leaving only 30% for Pay Per Clicks.
This fact does however help demonstrate that even though a business or corporation may receive enormous amounts of website traffic via either PPC or Natural/Organic Search Results alone, proper implementation of the other might very well be worthwhile. There are always the people that will prefer to click on advertisements, albeit a minority.
One advantage of Pay Per Click campaigns is that they take into effect the same day as being launched. Search Engine Optimization, depending on the status of the website before optimization may take anywhere from a few weeks to several months to notice results from the optimization. While this is quite unfortunate, it is unavoidable and simply a result of the nature of search engines and how they work.
70% of US Adults use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services.
63% of those who make online purchases use search engines to research offerings before making a purchase.
62% of internet searchers never look beyond the top 10 search results
90% of internet searchers never look beyond the top 30 search results
Search engine marketing not only brings in traffic, but is also useful in building a brand. In a recent study, 36% of internet users agreed with the following statement: "Seeing a company listed among the top results on a search engine makes me think that the company is a top one within its field." If your Brand's website is not on one of the first three search engine result pages, it means that you don't exist on the internet.
In a study of national retailers, Oneupweb found that only 12 out of 100 web sites are well optimized! Well-optimized sites get top search listings that yield extraordinary increases in traffic and conversions. However, non-optimized sites which are not found in the first three search engine result pages are gone unnoticed by a major portion of potential customers.
Another study of Fortune 100 corporations yielded similar results. Well-optimized sites got the top rankings that dramatically improved their bottom line, yet less than 10 percent of America's top corporate Web sites are optimized to reap these rewards.
Search Engine Optimization requires research, analysis, planning, and understanding of numerous aspects of website development, internet marketing, and the operations of various search engines. Search Engine Optimization includes of one or several of the following onsite or offsite optimizations, depending on a client's needs: