Digital marketing encompasses all online marketing efforts aimed at promoting products or services using digital channels such as websites, search engines, social media, email, and mobile apps. It's important for businesses because it allows them to reach a wider audience, engage in real-time, and measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts more accurately compared to traditional methods.

• The main components of digital marketing include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, and mobile marketing.

SEO involves optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords and phrases. It's important because it helps businesses increase organic (non-paid) traffic to their websites, improve visibility, and attract potential customers who are actively searching for their products or services.