To be honest, I didn’t understand SEO nor acknowledge its importance before taking 464.
During some research and study on the topic, I came to appreciate the weight of just how valuable SEO activities are to a business. According to research done by SEOmoz (the leading firm in SEO software), more digital marketers spend time daily in SEO than any other activity, including site analytics and social. In addition SEOmoz forecasted that this ratio is set to rise, as search optimization becomes more and more fundamental to marketing activity.
(http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1009368)
Search is hardly glamorous compared to its contemporaries, like social media or viral campaigns or even blog rolls (although these activities are interdependent). What helped me grasp its significance was an metaphor SEOmoz gave in their Beginner’s Guide to SEO, comparing the world wide web to a massive city with each webpage being a different destination. Search engines are therefore like the infrastructure that consumers absolutely rely on to get from a to b. It has become as essential to the way Internet works as cars and trucks and airplanes are to the way our economy runs.
Since search is the principal way consumers will navigate to your website, and since there’s such a massive difference in click-through rates for an engine’s top results, search has the ability to make or break a business. Delivering content in a way that engines recognize it as relevant and important to consumer queries has therefore become an essential part of eMarketing.