Rankings and traffic through search engine optimization

You’ll get the most out of this guide if your desire to learn search engine optimization (SEO) is exceeded only by your willingness to execute and test concepts.

This guide is designed to describe all major aspects of SEO, from finding the terms and phrases (keywords) that can generate qualified traffic to your website to making your site friendly to search engines, to building links and marketing the unique value of your site.

The world of search engine optimization is complex and ever-changing, but you can easily understand the basics, and even a small amount of SEO knowledge can make a big difference. Free SEO education is also widely available on the web, including in guides like this!

Combine this information with some practice and you are well on your way to becoming a savvy SEO.

What are the benefits of SEO?

Ranking higher is the most touted benefit of SEO, but rankings are really just a means to an end. Many of the real benefits of SEO are traffic-related.

SEO leads to more traffic

Because most people tend to click one of the first few search results, ranking higher usually drives more traffic to your website.

For example, look at the top three results for “submit website to search engines.” Using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, we can see that the top-ranking page seems to get the most organic traffic, followed by the second, then the third, etc.

Ahrefs’s study found that these observations are generally true across the board, as ranking position correlates strongly with overall traffic to a page.

SEO leads to consistent traffic

Ranking in search engines usually leads to both consistent and passive traffic. That’s rarely the case for mediums like social media and email marketing that often result in traffic spikes that quickly fade to nothing.

This happens because social media networks are designed to surface fresh content. Emails often get marked as read, forgotten, or land in the spam box. However, because the number of searches performed on search engines is typically consistent from month to month, the traffic tends to be both consistent and passive once you