What is SEO (search engine optimisation)?
The process of improving your website to increase visibility in Google and other search engines’ organic listings.
What is an organic listing?
When searching a keyword in Google, the organic listings, are often below Google Shopping and other paid-for ads in SERPs.
What does SERPs mean?
SERPs is an acronym for Search Engine Results Pages. Most people use Google as their search engine but many others are available. The term SERPs refers to all search engines, not just Google.
Here you can see that I have searched ‘fan heater’ in Google. This screenshot shows the results.
Let’s break that down.
Google Shopping
Near the top you will see a carousel of images, each has a product name, the number of reviews and the business that is selling this product. The retailers advertising in Google Shopping pay to have their products displayed in these positions.
Pay Per Click Ads
Beneath Google Shopping you will see a list of PPC links which you can identify as they always have a little ‘Ad’ at the beginning of the listing. These can be seen near the top of the page and also at the bottom. Businesses bid to pay for these positions on page one of Google, for specific keyword searches that are relevant to the product or service they wish to sell – they only pay if a potential customer clicks on the link. If nobody bids for this search term (fan heaters in this example), you wouldn’t see any ads at all. If it is a particularly important keyword for them, you can see as many as six PPC links.
Organic Listings
The organic links are beneath the PPC links. These links are not paid for by anyone. It is Google that decides which link appears there based on what it thinks is most relevant to the search term that has been used. These positions are very important for businesses as they cost nothing more than the effort they put into improving their site’s SEO.
How do businesses rank organically in Google?
Click the links below to learn more about each of the three pillars of SEO.
If you’d like to learn how I can improve the organic visibility of your website, contact me via email at josmithtoday@gmail.com.
DIGITAL TODAY - Digital Marketing Consultant 
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