Digital Basics Part 3: SEO in Plain English

So first things first, what does SEO even stand for? It stands for search engine optimization.

And all that really means is this, making your website easier for search engines like Google to find, understand and trust so that it shows up when people search for the things you do.

That's it.

That's the whole idea.

Everything else is detail.

Now, when you search on Google, you'll usually see two kinds of results.

Some of them are ads.

They'll have a little label that says sponsored.

Businesses pay for those every time someone clicks.

We'll talk about Google ads later in the season, in episodes seven and eight.

The rest are what we call organic results.

Those are the ones Google has chosen on its own because it thinks they're the best answer to the search.

Nobody can pay Google to put them there.

And that's what SEO is about, earning a spot in those organic results.

And while we're looking at that results page, it's worth noticing what's actually on it.

These days, a Google results page isn't just a list of 10 blue links.

Depending on what you search for, you might see ads at the top, you might see a map with a few local businesses pinned on it, you might see a box of questions that other people have asked.

You might see images, videos or products, and then the regular organic results.

Each of those spots is a chance to be found.

The map results in particular are a huge deal for local businesses, and that's exactly what we'll cover next week.

Today, I'm mostly talking about the regular organic results because the basics behind them apply to pretty much everything else on the page.