You’ve heard the term SEO and you probably know that it’s very important to your online and business success. Even with all of the talk of SEO, though, there is still some confusion as to what it really is. This guide is designed to clear up that confusion.

Let’s start from the beginning.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

What does that mean exactly? Let’s break it down. If you’ve found this guide, you definitely know what a search engine is. It’s that handy little tool that lets you look up whatever you need online. The biggest and most well-known one is, of course, Google, but it’s not the only one. You probably remember AOL. And don’t forget Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com – just to name a few.

Now, when you search for something – for instance, “what is SEO?” – you’ll see a page full of results. These are different pages the search engine pulls from the Internet that are relevant to your search query.

If you scroll to the bottom of the results page on Google, you’ll see the word Google which typically has a few extra “O’s” and an arrow to go to the next page. That’s because the first page you see is just the first few results – there are millions and sometimes billions of other results.

Now ask yourself how often you go past that first page of results? For the majority of people, the answer is “Never.”

This is the point of SEO. It’s the steps you take to make sure your website lands on that first page of results – preferably at the very top. To do so, it requires steps like optimizing your content, keywords, meta descriptions, images, and more. And this can be a challenge, especially if you’re just getting started.

Fortunately, you can take advantage of options like Zgraph SEO services to help. Outsourcing to companies like this helps you get your website ranking while giving you the opportunity to learn as you go.