Today, Google is one of the world’s top companies. Located in Mountain View, California, the company’s sprawling head quarters boasts more than 2 million square feet of office space and is nicknamed “Googleplex,” a portmanteau of Google and complex. Despite being synonymous high tech innovation, some of the Googleplex’s features are decidely low tech. For example, the company uses goats, which they rent from a grazing company, to mow their lawns.
Google is perhaps most famous for its popular search engine, also called Google. Search engines allow people to find websites based on the terms they search. For example, if you search for “cars” on the internet, the search engine will direct you websites about cars. Today, Google, with over 80% of the search engine market, is the most popular search engine in the world. One of the reasons for this success is the special algorithm it uses to rank websites, called “PageRank,” named after Google founder Larry Page.
Because of Google’s dominance over other search engines, how a company’s website shows up in a Google search can have a huge effect on whether people visit that website and subsequently buy their products. This is especially true since most customers will start researching a product or service through search engines rather than visiting that company’s website or asking on social media.
Recognizing the importance of search engines to business has given rise to a specialty called search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO refers to a set of methods intended to increase a website’s ranking in search engines. Using SEO tools is an important part of internet marketing. Leads generated through SEO have a higher close rate over outbound leads. Part of SEO’s success is due to the fact that SEO generates more natural visits to your websites because people believe a company’s sight is naturally the best place to get the information they desire.
Organic click-through generates 25% higher conversion rates than equivalent Pay-Per-Click (PP) click-through.
