Search engine optimization - what is it and how does it work?

How would it feel to get more customers online without having to spend a single euro on advertising? This is possible when you optimize the company's homepage and/or online store for search engines .

The most successful companies increase their traffic with the help of search engine optimization, or SEO. Advertisements are often run at the same time, but thanks to SEO, people can find websites without them, and the company is never completely dependent on advertising .

Here's the biggest reason why you shouldn't ignore search engine optimization either.

In addition to traffic, search engine optimization has other benefits; it e.g. helps to increase sales and increase trust in your company by showing your website high in Google search results. If you are not familiar with SEO and want to better understand how and why Search Engine Optimization really works, keep reading!

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a process during which the Google ranking and visibility of homepages or online stores are increased by various measures.

In search engine optimization, websites are improved so that they better meet the needs of customers and at the same time meet the criteria set by search engines. When a website/online store ticks these two boxes, Google starts recommending it more and more often to people searching for things relevant to the company's operations.

This, in turn, can be seen as a higher ranking of websites in search results, increased visitors and growing conversions, i.e. sales and contacts .

What does Search Engine Optimization include?

In the first search results, Google recommends websites that it believes offer the best user experience for the visitor who made that search. This is exactly what search engine optimization aims to influence.

Search engine optimization is improving a website to be user-friendly according to Google's criteria and best practices.

This includes filing several different features, from technical solutions to content with the customer first, but with Google in mind . Another essential part of search engine optimization is to identify and use keywords strategically and to produce high-quality, useful and interesting content for customers.

It is not possible to do any gimmicks, but the company's website/online store should really be all the things mentioned above, i.e. as customer-friendly as possible.

How does Search Engine Optimization work?

In order for Google to be able to recommend the right websites to people doing searches, the search engine's bots browse the web, screening and evaluating the content they find.

Googlebot moves through internal links and external links (between different sites), which is why links are an important part of search engine optimization. The bot's job is to look at the content of each page it finds and understand what each page is about, how well it works and how useful and original information it contains.

The more pages on a website that bots show the green light, the more likely it is that Google will show your home page or your online store among the first organic search results .

What all things affect search engine rankings?

Many things affect a website's search engine rankings.

But the most important of these are the previously mentioned user friendliness , search engine friendliness , content and internal linking .

High-quality online content gives visitors and potential customers the information they are looking for and need to proceed along the purchase path, and at the same time increases the chance that the site will receive external links from other websites, such as blogs and social media.

User- and search engine-friendliness ensures that people spend longer on the homepage/online store, and that Google finds your site technically functional and worth recommending. Thanks to internal linking , both Google and customers know how to navigate your website better.

Things that affect the ranking of a website in search engines:

User experience
Download speed
Responsiveness (optimization for mobile devices)
High-quality and (sufficiently) extensive content
Relevance and frequency of keywords
Domain authority
Number of internal links
Number and quality of external links
Site code

All of this information is used by search engine bots to form an idea of whether your website is worth recommending in a Google search. So make sure that at least the most important features are in order.