Does SEO Really Work?

By now, you’ve probably had a fair number of people talk to you about SEO. They’ve sung its praises, tried to show you how it works, and probably asked you to spend some money on the process. What they may not have explained to you, is whether SEO really works. As a website owner, you’ve already heard about all the supposed tricks that would help bring you thousands of new visitors. You know that they never worked, so why should this process be any different? Fortunately, there’s proof that SEO does work – and understanding the process should be enough to convince even the most skeptical site owner.

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of optimizing your site to gain better search engine placement. It’s not a trick, it’s not a hack, and it’s certainly not something that’s going to come back to bite you in a few years. This is a method of website optimization that helps websites better conform with Google’s ideas of what consumers actually want. When you make use of basic SEO, you’re bringing your site in line with what makes websites work better from both an algorithmic and a human perspective.

How it Works

Google (and all the other search engines) do not manually catalog the web. Instead, websites are automatically indexed and searched through via complex search algorithms. When a user searches for a key term, the search algorithm goes to work trying to match that term with what the search engine assumes the consumer needs. Search results are ranked by how closely the site itself matches the criteria of the search algorithm. High ranking sites have a number of structural similarities and they also prioritize ease of use over other design decisions. SEO works by marrying the mechanical needs of the algorithms with the human needs of consumers.

Why It’s Not a Scam

You’ve probably been promised a top search rank through various means in the past. It’s hard to look at anything that claims it will improve your business with anything but skepticism. SEO, though, is different. There’s no promise of a first-rank page here. There’s no easy solution. Instead, there’s a great deal of hard work and research that one will do to help bring a page more in line with the internet as imagined by major search giants. What you’ll be doing is helping your page gain more traction – not performing any kind of miracle.

Does SEO really work? It does, if you do it right. You’ll have to change the design of your website and keep up to date with the latest changes in the process, but it can help your site to gain a higher search rank when users search for the right key words. All SEO does is provide you with a set of instructions to creating a more viable website. What you do from there is up to you. Whether you make small changes on your own or you work with a company to make major SEO changes, you’ll see a difference in your site’s rank when you use better SEO practices.