Since search engines return results to users who are actively searching for a particular term or phrase, getting to the top of that stack means you’re providing information to the people who want it most, when they want it.

Unlike advertising, you aren’t trying to push information in front of people who might not be interested at the time. So, you have an active audience, and you don’t have to pay to get the message to them.

Overall, search engine optimization is one of the most effective and sustainable ways to build your online presence. Rather than seeing it as something to “fix” after you’ve created content, keep SEO top of mind from the beginning.

By following best practices at the start, you’ll create interesting, useful content that potential customers want (or need) to read. Then, the search engines will be happy to put you in front of a larger audience.

Many businesses believe that SEO strategies do not apply to them. Either they see it as too complicated, or they think their brick-and-mortar business doesn’t see any benefit from search engines. Both are untrue. SEO helps your business in many ways and is an essential tool in your marketing and outreach efforts.

Internet users rely on search to answer questions, to learn more about products and services, and to find companies. If your focus is local, potential customers still use search engines to look for reviews and directions.

Even if a customer is already familiar with your business name, they are likely to type that into a search engine rather than trying to remember your domain. At the very least, then, you’ll want to make sure searchers can find your site when they’re looking for you.

When your SEO strategy works, it means good things for you and your visitors. It also creates a cycle that reinforces itself. For one, your website rank improves, which means more visitors will find your pages in search results. With wider exposure and traffic to your high-value content, more sites will link to your pages. This increases your authority and credibility, which leads to improvement in your website rank. And so on.

SEO is a combination of activities that help search engines find and trust you, organize the information you’re publishing, and present it to users searching for it.

More and more, SEO really means writing for humans. It involves performing keyword research to first determine what your audience is looking for and how. Then, your content should incorporate those keywords in a natural and useful way. Finally, you should promote your content so it gets shared and linked to by others, increasing your authority.

SEO isn’t a single tool or process. It’s not a series of tricks (like keyword stuffing) or secrets (like link trading) you can use to fool search engines. It’s also not a series of shortcuts that allow you to buy your way to the top of the search results.

All of these tactics have been used in the past by businesses and search engine “professionals” trying to game the system. Many of them achieved results, but only temporarily.

As search engines become more sophisticated, they get better at returning real results instead of low-quality articles stuffed with keywords or supported by cheap backlinks. The engines now actually penalize these techniques and reward content that is truly optimized for search engines.