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Every day, millions of people use search engines to find information or services from all aspects of life: Recipes, guides, products, flights, navigation, tickets, entertainment, and more. Most people navigate the web using search engines to find answers to their questions and solutions to their challenges.

A study shows that 68% of the web's traffic comes from search engines. 53% of this traffic has its origins in organic search—search results that are not ads (paid search) and can be improved through SEO.

In other words, organic search (SEO) and paid search (SEA, ads in search results) make up the lion's share of traffic on the web.

Even where we go offline is significantly influenced by search engines: We use Google and Apple Maps and local search results to find places and nearby services like hairdressers, supermarkets, restaurants, and doctors. We choose our destination based on online reviews. And we instruct search engine-based services to guide us there, be it by car, public transportation, or on foot.

Now, imagine if your business, products, and services are not listed in search results. Imagine people can't find you online to buy your products or find their way to your brick-and-mortar business. Instead, they will most likely choose your competition.

With the help of SEO, users can find your business, products, and services online—and buy them. As mentioned, that means that people can find you online and much easier offline, too.

SEO maximizes your chances to be listed in top positions for keywords crucial to your business. The better your position, the more people will find their way to your website—preferably on the first page (or top ten) of search results.

Why Page One?

Good question. Studies have shown that 31.7% of users click on the first organic search result (position one); a whopping 75.1% of all clicks go to the top three search results. After that, the number of clicks shrinks rapidly with every following position.

This behavior shows that users rarely look at page two or lower results, let alone click on any of them.

That's why businesses need to be present on the first page of search results, at least for relevant keywords.

In short: It's crucial for freelancers and business owners to

1. Own a website or any kind of online presence, even if they offer their products or services offline
2. Perform SEO to make sure they rank on page one for relevant keywords

Keyword is a technical term for search queries (words, phrases, sentences, and questions). With their help, users find content that answers their questions and provides solutions. Put simply, a keyword is the link between users and your website. Search engines compare keywords with websites, looking for content with the highest relevance.

A big part of SEO lies in identifying keywords that have the potential to drive relevant traffic to your website—in other words, bringing in prospective customers. To do that, you need to identify search terms (or keywords) people use when searching for offers like yours. This process is called keyword research. Ideally, keyword research provides you with a list of keywords covering search queries across the entire customer journey.

So we know that relevance is a crucial factor for a top position in search results. To create relevant content, you want to deal with the topics and questions around a keyword on an individual subpage or URL. Then, make sure your keyword appears in crucial spots on your page.

Let's say you are in the ice cream business. One of your keywords is s'mores ice cream sandwich. Now you focus on everything that has to do with a s'mores ice cream sandwich.

What you want to do is create a recipe page for a s'mores ice cream sandwich where users find an easy-to-follow recipe, pictures or videos, and answers to questions they might have. S'mores ice cream sandwich is your focus keyword that should appear in your page's URL, title, headlines, and more.

Providing a dedicated and keyword-optimized page makes it easy for search engines—and users, too—to determine what your page is all about. That way, they can list it in good positions in related search results.

First, check out the advisor's board by clicking Advisor in the top navigation bar. It is a Kanban board helping you organize your tasks by status. Your tasks are color coded by importance:

• Red: High. Solve ASAP.
• Yellow: Medium. Tackle those soon.
• Blue: Low. Keep them in mind and solve them when you can.

You can drag and drop as you complete tasks, assign tasks to other users (depending on your plan), and filter by the assignee.

As mentioned above, tasks are a mix of standard basic SEO measures and issues found in weekly automated audits of your website.

I want an advisor for other websites. How do I get it?

How do I assign tasks to other users?

There are tasks I've already covered. Why do they pop up?

Maybe you already stopped to think, “Wait, but I don't care about my visibility for keywords that have nothing to do with my business.” And you are right. While Visibility is a great score to get an idea of your overall performance and compare websites in general, it's not tailored to your specific keyword set.

That's why we provide Project Visibility. This metric is calculated the same way as Visibility, but instead of using 500,000 cross-industry keywords, Project Visibility is exclusively based on keywords in your Rank Tracker.

In other words, Project Visibility is a custom visibility score for the unique set of keywords relevant to your business.

You'll find Project Visibility here: Projects → Rank Tracker → Visibility.

As you might already know, you can also track your competitors' rankings in your Rank Tracker. That way, you'll get Project Visibility for them, too, allowing for a much more realistic comparison. So, even if they have a slightly different product or service portfolio, Project Visibility accounts exclusively for keywords you actually share.

Why is Visibility score useful?

Short answer: Don't make improving Visibility a goal in your SEO strategy.

Long answer: Visibility reflects the quality of your rankings in a single metric; it won't lead to better rankings. Make it your goal to improve your rankings for relevant keywords that prospective customers actually use to find products and services like yours. Improving your rankings will improve your Visibility, too. But it's your rankings that really matter.

As a rule of thumb, your Visibility score will be higher if

• Your domain's URLs rank in good positions
• You have a high number of indexed URLs with good rankings
• You rank well for keywords with a high search volume