SEO in Marketing: What Does SEO Stand For?

Why SEO Matters

Search engines are the front door of the internet for most people. When someone has a question, needs a product, or wants to find a local business, they type a query into Google, Bing, or another search engine and expect relevant results within seconds. SEO is the discipline of making sure your website is one of those results. Unlike paid advertising, where you buy your way onto the page, organic search rankings are earned through relevance, quality, and technical excellence. That distinction makes SEO one of the most sustainable and cost-effective marketing channels available.

The business case for SEO is compelling. Organic search drives roughly 53 percent of all website traffic according to BrightEdge research, making it the single largest traffic source for most websites. Paid search, social media, and direct traffic each contribute smaller shares. For businesses that depend on digital visibility, ignoring SEO means leaving the majority of potential traffic on the table. Moreover, organic traffic does not require a per-click payment. While SEO requires investment in content creation, technical optimization, and link building, the traffic it produces does not carry the ongoing marginal cost that paid channels do. A well-optimized page can attract visitors for months or years after publication.

A widespread misconception about SEO is that it is a one-time project. Some business owners believe they can “do SEO” once, check the box, and move on. In reality, SEO is an ongoing process. Search engine algorithms evolve continuously. Competitors publish new content and earn new links. User behavior shifts as new devices and search features emerge. Staying visible requires consistent effort: updating existing content, monitoring technical health, building authoritative backlinks, and adapting to algorithm changes.

Another common mistake is focusing exclusively on keywords and neglecting user experience. Early SEO was dominated by keyword stuffing and link schemes, but modern search engines are sophisticated enough to evaluate page quality, load speed, mobile usability, and content depth. Google’s core algorithm updates over the past several years have increasingly rewarded sites that provide genuinely helpful content and penalized those that prioritize manipulation over value. Marketers who approach SEO as a content quality and user experience challenge, rather than a technical trick, tend to achieve more durable results.

How to Use SEO

SEO is not a single metric with a formula; it is a practice encompassing multiple disciplines. However, you can measure its impact through key performance indicators.

Organic Traffic = Total sessions from organic search (via Google Analytics)
Keyword Rankings = Position of target pages for target queries (via Search Console or Semrush)
Organic CTR = Clicks / Impressions (via Google Search Console)

Organic Traffic tells you how many visitors arrive at your site from unpaid search results. Track this in Google Analytics under the organic search channel.

Keyword Rankings show where your pages appear in search results for specific queries. Google Search Console provides average position data for free, while tools like Semrush and Mangools offer more granular daily tracking with historical comparisons.

Organic CTR measures the percentage of people who see your listing in search results and click through. A low CTR might indicate that your title tags and meta descriptions need improvement, even if your rankings are strong.

SEO work generally falls into three categories. On-page SEO involves optimizing individual pages through keyword research, content creation, title tags, meta descriptions, header structure, internal linking, and image optimization. Technical SEO ensures that search engines can crawl and index your site efficiently, covering areas like site speed, mobile-friendliness, structured data markup, XML sitemaps, and canonical tags. Off-page SEO builds your site’s authority through backlinks from other reputable websites, brand mentions, and digital PR. All three categories work together, and neglecting any one of them can limit results.

You will use SEO tools throughout the process. Google Search Console is the foundational free tool, providing data on which queries bring up your site, how often users click, and any crawling or indexing issues Google has detected. Semrush offers comprehensive keyword research, competitive analysis, site auditing, and rank tracking. Mangools provides a user-friendly suite for keyword research through its KWFinder tool and SERP analysis. Other popular tools include Ahrefs for backlink analysis and Screaming Frog for technical audits.

Real-World Examples

Example 1: Local bakery website. A bakery in Portland optimizes its website for the keyword “best bakery in Portland.” The owner creates a dedicated page with genuine customer reviews, high-quality photos of pastries, business hours, and a Google Maps embed. She also claims and optimizes the Google Business Profile, ensuring the name, address, and phone number are consistent everywhere online. Within three months, the bakery appears in the local pack (the map-based results) for bakery-related queries. Organic traffic increases by 40 percent, and the bakery reports a noticeable uptick in new customers mentioning they found the shop through Google.

Example 2: B2B software company blog. A cybersecurity firm identifies that its target buyers frequently search for terms like “how to prevent ransomware attacks.” The marketing team publishes a comprehensive 3,000-word guide covering prevention strategies, response protocols, and vendor evaluation criteria. They include original statistics from their own customer data, earning backlinks from industry publications that reference the data. The guide ranks on page one within two months, generates 5,000 organic visits per month, and becomes the top source of marketing-qualified leads for the company’s sales team.

Example 3: E-commerce category page optimization. An online furniture retailer notices that its “mid-century modern desks” category page sits on page three of Google. A technical audit reveals that the page loads slowly due to uncompressed images, lacks descriptive content beyond product listings, and has a thin meta description. The team compresses images, adds 500 words of helpful buying guide content to the top of the category page, writes a compelling meta description, and fixes internal linking so that related blog posts point to the category page. Rankings improve from position 28 to position 7 over six weeks, and organic revenue from that category doubles.

FAQ

Q: What does SEO stand for in marketing?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the collection of strategies and techniques used to increase a website’s visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. The goal is to attract more relevant traffic by making your site more understandable and authoritative in the eyes of search engines like Google and Bing.

Q: How do you do SEO?

SEO involves three main pillars. First, on-page optimization: research keywords your audience searches for, create high-quality content targeting those keywords, and structure your pages with clear titles, headers, and meta descriptions. Second, technical optimization: ensure your site loads quickly, works well on mobile devices, is easy for search engines to crawl, and uses structured data where appropriate. Third, off-page optimization: earn backlinks from reputable websites through valuable content, outreach, and digital PR. Consistent execution across all three pillars produces the best results.

Q: Is SEO the same as SEM?

They are related but not identical. SEO focuses specifically on organic (unpaid) search visibility. SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, is a broader term that historically encompassed both organic and paid search efforts. In common usage today, many marketers use SEM to refer specifically to paid search advertising (PPC campaigns on Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising). So while SEO and SEM both aim to generate visibility on search engine results pages, SEO targets the organic listings and SEM typically refers to the paid listings.

Q: What is a good benchmark for SEO performance?

There is no single benchmark because SEO performance varies by industry, competition level, and domain authority. However, some useful reference points exist. An organic CTR above 3 percent for your average position is generally healthy. For specific keywords, ranking on the first page of Google (positions 1 through 10) is the minimum threshold for meaningful traffic, since fewer than 1 percent of searchers click results on page two. Month-over-month organic traffic growth of 5 to 10 percent is a strong indicator of a healthy SEO program. Domain authority or domain rating scores, while not used by Google directly, serve as useful proxies for your site’s backlink strength relative to competitors.

Sources

• Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide
• BrightEdge: Organic Search Share of Traffic
• Google Search Central: How Google Search Works
• Moz: The Beginner’s Guide to SEO
• Semrush: State of Search Report