Theory and Practice of Search Engine Optimization

Introduction

The extensive range of information resources and services is certainly one of the most important features of the Internet while at the same time, web search is considered as a crucial application for managing the massive volumes of distributed web content. Beyond argument, search engines have made an enormous contribution to the web by making the process of finding information online a very quick and easy process. Today, major search engines are considered to be the most common and trusted tool or service to retrieve information from the Internet. Also, they are the primary method used for navigation for hundreds of millions of users worldwide and one of the most common online activities (Spink & Xu, 2000; Purcell, 2011; Purcell, Brenner, & Rainie, 2012). Studies have shown that a significant percentage of consumers turn to search engines first when shopping for products online or when information gathering really matters (Murga, 2017; Schwartz, 2018). The majority of Internet traffic depends largely on them and thus, web search is one of the best sources of traffic for any website (Safran, 2013; Giomelakis & Veglis, 2016; Brightedge, 2018). However, it is true that the vast majority of all search traffic comes from the first or the first pages of search results as users usually focus on the top ranks.

There are two ways an online user – customer will find a business website via a search engine: through a pay-per-click campaign (PPC) or through an organic result listing that is based essentially on what is called Search Engine Optimization or briefly, SEO. The latter can be defined as the process of affecting - improving the visibility of a website (or a web page) so that it ranks well for particular keywords in a search engine's “natural” or “organic” (un-paid) search results (Ledford, 2009; Potts, 2007). Generally, the earlier, and more frequently a site appears in the search engine results page, the more visitors it will receive from the search traffic. In other words, it is a set of techniques that take into account the evaluation criteria of search engines regarding website content and structure (Giomelakis & Veglis, 2015).

There have been plenty studies regarding online users’ click behavior on search engine results pages. According to some results, about 90 percent of search engine users never read beyond the third page of search results while page two and three get only 5.59 percent of the clicks (iProspect, 2006; Petrescu, 2014). Also, the top listing in Google’s organic search results receives 32.5 percent of the traffic, compared to 17.6 percent for the second and 11.4 percent for the third position (Chitika, 2013). Finally, websites listed on the first page in Google’s results generate about 72 to 92 percent of all traffic from an average search (Chitika, 2013; Petrescu, 2014). From all the above, it is evident that if a website is not in the first search results page or even worse is absent from the top 30, it has almost no chance of being read by a user (Clay, 2006). As a consequence, and while more and more websites are indexed by search engines and compete one another to ensure their own market share, it is clear that factors as the highest ranking and top of the results page become increasingly essential for businesses of all kinds (Enge, Spencer, & Stricchiola, 2015; Giomelakis & Veglis, 2015).