If you’re a business owner who isn’t exactly tech-savvy, you may be wondering what SEO is and why you need it. Well, in 2022, the way that most of your customers or clients find you for the first time is online. And customers don’t just want to see you online; they want to become familiar with your brand online. So, companies that don’t prioritize online engagement are significantly missing out. What does this have to do with SEO? Everything.
Your company must maintain a presence online to be competitive and enjoy a market share. Even though you already have a website, you may still be invisible to your customers. When people search online for businesses like yours, do you show up on page one? If you don’t, you have work to do. You’ll have to make SEO the focus of your business website.
Related: 7 Tips to Create a User-friendly Website
What is SEO?
SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. This is how you improve your site’s online visibility for search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Trying to build a business without maximizing your online presence is like building a brick-and-mortar shop in a dense jungle where no one can find it. What’s the point?
There is a process to SEO that considers several factors that will make your website more attractive to search engines, pushing you to page one of any relevant query. What’s the big deal with being on page one, you ask? When’s the last time you did a Google search and went to see who was on page 10?
The process evaluates keywords and other core web vitals, like site speed, interactivity, mobile-friendliness, and the content on your web pages. But more than just making your company website more visible online, SEO will make you more responsive to your customers, anticipating their needs and providing the kind of content they want. Adhering to an SEO strategy will also help you serve your customers better.
What Are the 4 Types of SEO?
SEO may be separated into four types:
- On-Page SEO (also called On-Site SEO) – This is about optimizing the content on your website. The process includes attention to the body of work, keywords, meta titles, headers, images, meta descriptions, and much more.
- Off-Page SEO – This has to do with everything that doesn’t happen on your company website. It focuses on generating exposure and trust for your company. It also relies heavily on link building, which is getting better-known websites to link back to your site.
- Local SEO – This is SEO that directs its attention to specific geographic areas. It seeks to improve your visibility within your community and promote you to the people nearest you. Local SEO has lots to do with your Google My Business profile. This is where you list your address, description, business hours, reviews, and photos.
- Technical SEO – This is all about the actions taken to aid search engines to ‘crawl’ your company website and improve user experience (UX). This type of SEO is constantly changing due to the ever-growing complexities of search engine algorithms.
Why SEO is Essential for Marketing
SEO is essential to marketing because traffic to your site means the success or failure of your company. Trillions of searches happen yearly, with many being commercial in nature. That means they’re looking for information about products and services. So ranking higher in search results pages than your competitors will profoundly affect your business.
Related: Reasons Why Your Company Needs a Website
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The 7 Benefits of SEO
Here are 7 benefits of SEO:
1 Creates Trust With Your Customers
If you can rank high enough on searches to be seen, your customers can trust that you have value to offer. Ranking high means you have built authority with good page speeds, backlinks, and the other elements that are weighed in rankings. Complying with SEO guidelines means your site is optimized in every regard, which is a good thing for you and your customers. SEO gives you a tangible reason for creating and maintaining a site that your customers can navigate easily, be secure, and find value.
2 Puts You in Front of Your Customers
More than half of all online traffic is the result of organic search. This means that the people who find you are looking for what you provide. You’re already a match! If you do SEO right, you can move up the rankings on page one to the number one position on the page, where click-through is all but guaranteed.
3 Improves Brand Awareness
What could be better for brand awareness than being seen? Even if you don’t get the click-through or the top spot on page one, potential customers still see you on that results page and will associate your company with their issue. This means that when they need a solution or information, your brand can be what immediately comes to mind.
Bonus Tip: When trying to rank in a specific search, consider going for the more extended, more specific variation of that search. Instead of trying to rank for ‘catering services,’ go for something more specific like ‘catering services for small business functions’ or ‘best catering for small business functions in the Atlanta area.’ The latter will generate fewer results, but you can rank higher faster.
4 Helps Create a Better User Experience
SEO’s main component is creating a better user experience for your customers. This is a priority for the Google algorithm along with their other Core Web Vitals, like page speed. It helps them to determine what kind of user experience your site will provide and, ultimately, whether they should direct people to you. SEO gives you an excellent reason to ensure the quality of your website and understand your customers’ needs.
5 It’s Budget-Friendly
SEO won’t break your bank. For such a necessary process, you can accomplish it without significant expenditures. You can learn this yourself if your company doesn’t yet have the funds to hire an SEO expert. The highest cost will be the time it takes to learn SEO and implement the practices.
6 It Helps Your Overall Marketing Strategy
SEO will aid all of your marketing, not just Google search. Everything web-related thing you do will consider SEO as a part of its process. This means that added time taken to research can show you emerging trends in your industry, what your customers are searching for, what facets of your offering are useful to your customers, and how to brand new features of your goods or services.
Related: Importance of Professional Website Design for Business
7 SEO is Trackable
You can know what elements of your digital work are paying off and what isn’t. Unlike other forms of marketing, print ads, billboards, etc., it’s hard to know how well they’re doing, but SEO is trackable. Not as trackable as paid ads, but with a bit of work, it’s a close second. Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to determine conversions based on page views, on-side clicks, click-to-call, etc., as well as how people are finding you, your ranking, and how you can improve.
If your company wants to benefit from search engine results, you’ll have to get into the SEO game and play hard.
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