You’ve probably heard the term “SEO” thrown around by marketing people, in online articles, or during sales pitches. But what exactly is SEO, and why does it matter for your business?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization,” and the most basic explanation is that it’s the practice of improving your website so that it shows up higher in search engine results. Think of Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine: when someone types in a question or looks for a service or product, the search engine returns a list of pages it believes to be most relevant. SEO is how you help your site become one of the top results.

But the more complicated explanation is that SEO isn’t just about search engines. It’s about the people who are using them, and those people are your potential customers.

SEO Is About Being Found

If your website isn’t showing up in search results, you’re essentially hidden to anyone who doesn’t already know about your business. Good SEO puts your site in front of the people who are actively searching for what you provide, even if they’ve never heard of you before.

It’s not about tricking Google or any other search engine. At the end of the day, that tactic always fails. It’s about clearly communicating what your site offers, and making it easy for both users and search engines to find and understand it. You need to provide the answer to the user’s question, whether that is information, a product, or a service.

The Holy Trinity of SEO

While SEO can get quite complex technically, it generally falls into three main areas: on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.

On-Page SEO: Content for People (and bots…more on them below)

This includes the actual words and images on your site i.e. the content your visitors see and read. On-page SEO involves using relevant keywords (the phrases people search for) in strategic places like page titles, headings, text and captions. This also includes organizing your content in a logical way, using proper headings, internal links, and image descriptions.

For example, if you’re writing a page about roof repairs in Denver, it should include terms like “roof repair Denver” or “emergency roofing service” naturally throughout the content. Not forced, spammy or rigid, just written in a way that matches what people are searching for in a way that feels like normal writing.

Off-Page SEO: Digital Street Cred

Search engines don’t just rely on what you say about yourself on your website; they also look at what other websites say about you. This includes backlinks (links from other websites to yours), reviews, and mentions across the internet.

When a reputable site links to yours, it signals to search engines that your site is both trustworthy and relevant. These endorsements help improve your visibility and credibility. In short, off-page SEO is what builds your reputation.

Technical SEO: Google Looks Under the Hood

This is the structural and performance-based side of SEO. Search engines consider things like:

• How fast your site loads.
• Whether it’s responsive (works well on mobile devices).
• If your site is secure (“HTTPS” instead of “HTTP”).
• How easy it is for search engine bots to crawl your site’s pages (this is essentially how they learn and index information about your site).

A beautiful, well-written and designed website that loads slowly, has broken links, or doesn’t work on mobile devices will struggle to rank well, no matter how great its content or design.

So Is SEO Just for Google?

The truth is…mostly. But also, not only! Google dominates the search engine market by a large margin, so most SEO best practices are centered around how Google ranks and shows results. That said, other search engines like Bing and Yahoo generally follow similar guidelines.

SEO also plays a role on platforms that include internal search functionality, like YouTube, Facebook, or Amazon. But for most businesses, showing up on Google when someone is searching for the solution they provide is the top priority.

Is SEO a One-Time Fix?

Possibly but not usually. Think of a teeter-totter. Only one person can be at the top at a time. If you are currently up on the playground, when the person on the bottom pushes off (in this case by improving their own SEO) it pushes you down. So you then have to do more work to push yourself back up. If your competition is not doing anything to improve or maintain their own SEO ranking, and the search engines do not make changes that negatively impact your ranking, you may be able to do the work and then simply monitor for changes. However, that is not usually the way it happens.

This is where many businesses get frustrated. SEO is not usually a single job or a quick fix. It’s an ongoing process of improving, updating, and maintaining your website so that it continues to perform well as search engines and user behaviors and needs change.

Google updates its algorithms frequently to make sure that search results remain both useful and relevant. That means even if your website ranks well today, it might not stay there unless it continues to meet user expectations and SEO best practices.

That said, the basic requirements of SEO strategy don’t change as often as the more fluid tactics. Clear content, fast performance, useful pages, and a good reputation remain the most important parts of SEO.

Why SEO Is Worth It

The long-term value of SEO lies in organic traffic. That is, visitors who find your site “organically” through search engines. Unlike paid ads, which stop the moment your allocated budget ends, SEO can continue to deliver results over a long period of time.

Here’s what good SEO can do for your business:

• Bring “high-intent” traffic: These are people actively searching for what you offer.
• Build credibility: Showing up in organic search results reinforces trust.
• Improve UX (user experience): SEO best practices usually make your site more enjoyable to use.
• Support all your other marketing efforts: A strong SEO foundation can boost the performance of all your content, social media, and advertising.

SEO Is About Serving Real People

Despite all the algorithms, data, and technical jargon, SEO really comes down to a simple question: are you providing valuable and relevant content in a way that’s easy for people (and to be fair, search engine bots) to access?

Search engines want to deliver the best results to their users. That’s their job! Your job through SEO is to make sure your site earns a high place in those results by being genuinely useful and well-built.

So if you’re still wondering what SEO actually is, here’s the short answer: it’s how your business gets found online, and how you keep staying found!

Want to Be Found Online? Start Here!

At Wild Iris Marketing, we help businesses build and strengthen their SEO from the ground up, so your business is not just online, but is actually “findable.” Whether you’re just getting your business started or trying to improve your rankings, we can help you create a smarter, better, more searchable web presence!

Let’s get you seen.