It is clear that there is a major shift toward doing everything online. People do their taxes, they book their flights, and they fork out a chunk of money every year doing their shopping online. Nowadays, they are most likely using their tablets and smartphones to do this instead of their laptops and desktops. So much so that in 2014, mobile device internet usage is supposed to overtake the more traditional internet use on desktops.

So why is this important?

With so many people flooding the internet every day, companies have to work extra hard to catch a user’s attention. There are millions of websites that offer similar services or products, and marketing can be the only way to make one stand out over another. In order to accomplish this, many people turn to search engine optimization (SEO) because it gives them a chance to increase their search engine rankings. This is important because more than half of all consumers use search engines to research products, rather than directly visit a company’s website, or check it out on social media. And among all the results that come up on a search engine results page (SERP), users typically only look at the first page. This means that if you have a low search engine ranking, your site will never be seen. Well maybe not never, but there is a chance.

How do you stop this from happening?

Many companies turn over their online marketing to search engine optimization (SEO) experts. They understand that search engines like Google, who owns almost 70 percent of the search engine market, are the primary source of information for the average consumer. SEO involves studying user trends on search engines to determine what words they type into a query to find what they are looking for. SEO companies focus on using these keywords in quality content that they can provide for a client. This content contains organic links that users are liable to click on to find out more information. These links can lead back to different areas of your site. More than three quarters of internet users ignore paid advertisements, making these organic links crucial to gaining traffic on your site. Also, the conversion rate of an organic click-through is 25 percent higher than pay-per-click. The more users visit your site to read quality content via organic links, the higher your search engine ranking will rise.

Once you have a high search engine ranking, SEO online marketing techniques can keep you at the top. Simply getting your site on the first page of a SERP is not enough. You have to continue to work on optimizing your web design, adding fresh content to your site, and making sure all your information is up to date. Luckily, SEO companies can do this for you, too. They use all of these comprehensive online marketing strategies to ensure your company’s success among the millions of other websites out there that might be just like yours. Beat your competitors out with SEO.