Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. It is important because it makes your website more visible, which results in more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects to customers. In addition, SEO can help you to build relationships with your clients and potential clients, and position your business as authoritative and trustworthy in your industry.
The Elements of SEO
An effective SEO strategy involves a variety of elements that all work together to make sure your website is visible, valuable, and user-friendly.
Keywords – These are the words and phrases that your audience is using online to find content, products, and services. It makes sense then, that as a business, you need to be clear about how potential customers are searching for what it is that you have to offer. Therefore, your keywords should be well-researched and carefully chosen, and then used judiciously throughout your site.
You should include a combination of short-tail, long-tail, and local keywords to your strategy, and optimize your titles, URLs and images with them in addition to using them within content on your site.
Content – In this new era of SEO, content is king. Gone are the days of simply stuffing your website with relevant keywords without providing any value. Rather, the latest updates to the search algorithms require your content to be smart and engaging, and filled with facts and quality commentary. But quality content isn’t enough by itself, it must be backed up by strong web design – every nuance, from the color pallette to the imagery, matters when trying to get highly ranked.
Google’s algorithm can tell when your website is delivering authentic, valuable web content that aligns with your audience’s search intent, and rewards you for it. Afterall, Google’s self-proclaimed mission is to give people the gift of relevance. Thus, rather than just having words on a page, your content should provide answers to the questions that your audience is asking.
Usability – Without getting too technical, usability refers to how your website works and how its structure interacts with the search engine algorithms. The foundations of usability include your website’s:
- Crawlability – How easy is it for the search engine find your content?
- Website Structure – How is the search engine prioritising your web content?
- Backlinks – How does the search engine understand that your content provides trustworthy information?
How SEO Impacts Your Business
Now that you have a general idea of what SEO entails, it is important to understand why SEO is important for your business.
Visibility – The very reason that you have a website for your business is so that your clients and potential clients can find you, learn more about you, and have questions related to your industry, products or services answered. This is where SEO is most important. Simply put, SEO helps your website to rank higher on a search engine result page. And the higher you rank on the results page, the more visibility you have.
Increased SEO Efforts = Higher Ranking = Higher Visibility
Web Traffic – With your primary goal being to drive visitors to your website with the hopes of converting them to a customer, increased traffic is a must. We’ve already said that SEO helps to achieve higher ranking on search engine result pages, and this is directly linked to increased traffic to your website. Consider that 33% of clicks go the first page ranking, and 75% of ALL clicks go to the first five pages ranked.
Increased SEO Efforts = Higher Ranking = Higher Visibility = Increased Traffic
Authority – A relatively new concept to SEO, the idea of authority is growing in importance. It essentially means that your website is credible and trustworthy, and provides high-quality, relevant and valuable content. The more authority your website has, the more trustworthy your brand will be viewed.
Visitor Experience – By optimizing your website with on-page SEO tactics like we have discussed, you can improve the overall experience had by visitors to your page. A better experience—including responsiveness for viewing on a variety of devices, increasing page load speed, and quality content—reduces the bounce rate and keeps visitors on your page for longer periods of time.
You have worked hard to build your business, and its digital presence—so now be sure that it is seen! For help building and executing your SEO strategy, contact MJ2 Marketing today for a consult