Search Engine Optimization is the process of organizing and presenting information on your website, so that it ranks well on Google and Bing SERPs. “Search engine result pages” – An industry term for search results. SEO aims to bring you free “Organic” traffic and while it is not the primary focus of this document, it’s worth exploring a bit to help you make sense of the industry.
Google’s search algorithms are constantly evolving to keep up with changing user trends, new technologies, and in response to bad actors who are trying to cheat the system.
When the search engine first launched in 1997, it was based on the simple premise that a website’s worth is based on the number of links flowing into it from other sites. For example, if the New York Times wrote an article and many other pages linked to it, then surely nytimes.com is high quality, and should rank higher for that content than the other sites. This is a gross simplification for illustrative purposes, but it demonstrates how important links are. This original algorithm is known as PageRank.
Fast forward a decade, and to many SEO was nothing more than purchasing links from thousands of spammy sites. Most of these sites were massive lists of links, and had no value to a human visitor. In addition to this, they were adding hundreds of “meta-tags” to each website to attract visits. A meta tag is something the user doesn’t see, but is text added to guide the search engine into understanding your content.
APRIL 24, 2012 | PENGUIN UPDATE
If website had been benefiting from less-than-reputable SEO practices when this update launched, you were suddenly nowhere to be found on Google.
Today it is said that there are over 200 factors which the algorithm considers when deciding how to rank a website for each query. Because these factors are constantly evolving, and the relative importance of each is changing, then ongoing SEO is vital.
This infographic illustrates the number of updates occurring between 2013 and Q1 2016.

A more recent example occurred on August 1, 2018. Google launched what appeared to be a very disruptive update, which the community named “Medic”. This was because this change appeared to massively decrease traffic to some Health & Wellness sites, while hugely bolstering others.

There is a category of websites which Google calls YMYL. This stands for Your Money or Your Life. These are defined as any sites which if poor quality or malicious, would cause damage to your health or wealth.
Think of get rich quick schemes, or fake weight loss pills.
While pure in intent, this update caused many sites to experience large traffic swings up or down. As with anything mass and computational, there are errors and false positives. Even if you were offering legitimate Health & Wellness products, services, or advice, your traffic might have been cut in half overnight.
Or if you were lucky, it might have doubled.
Staying on top of SEO is important and relevant, but it’s also slow and highly fluid. As such, paid ads are an excellent way to drive growth immediately!