Looking to perform SEO on your website but not sure about what it can do for your business?
SEO can seem too complicated to understand, as it involves tweaking websites and working with search engines. But it’s simpler than you think!
What Does SEO Mean?
SEO is short for search engine optimization, a combination of activities designed to drive visitors to your website. This internet marketing practice helps search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo find your website and deliver information from your site to users who are searching for it.
How Does SEO Work?
Ever wondered why certain web pages appear at the top of Google results when you search for a certain term or phrase? It’s the optimization performed on those websites and outside of them that boosts their search engine rankings.
SEO activities fall into two groups: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Both have the same goal: to rank a website higher on search engines and drive traffic to it. They differ in the tasks involved to achieve that goal.
On-page SEO (also called on-site SEO) – On-page SEO optimizes elements on a website such as content, title tags, and meta descriptions.
Off-page SEO (also called off-site SEO) – Off-page SEO builds links outside a website through publishing useful content on other websites, reaching out to influencers, and other activities to earn links to the site.
What SEO is NOT
People who are frustrated about not getting results from SEO most likely have unrealistic expectations of it.
Let’s set things straight. Here are four things SEO is not:
A quick fix
You can’t build a certain number of links and expect results in just a month. SEO doesn’t work that way. Optimizing your website for search engines is a long-term strategy—from researching the right keywords to use for your site to building links naturally and measuring results.
An SEO strategy takes time to deliver results but, when done properly, the time—and money—spent on it will definitely pay off in the long term.
A magic trick to deceive search engines
Black hat and grey hat SEO techniques like stuffing a website with keywords and buying links are a thing of the past. Today, Google penalizes websites that don’t help users at all.
To achieve long-lasting results, your best bet is to use white-hat SEO practices that focus on providing users with relevant and valuable information.
A single solution for businesses
SEO brings plenty of benefits to a business, but it doesn’t mean you should rely on it alone to increase your sales.
Rather, SEO is a critical part of a digital marketing strategy. It complements other marketing activities that can involve content, video, email campaigns and social media.
Paid advertising
SEO is different from paid advertising and even search engine marketing (SEM). Don’t be confused by these terms!
SEM refers to paid techniques such as pay-per-click marketing (PPC). With PPC, you spend money on ads to get your website on top of search results. That isn’t the case with SEO, which involves ranking a website in organic search or unpaid search results.
Can SEO be Learned?
Anyone can learn SEO. But not everyone has the time to implement it. Running successful SEO campaigns requires time as well as expert knowledge and high-level skills.
A cost-effective approach is to enlist the help of a professional team that can do the job for you and let you focus on your business. Talk to us to learn more about how you can leverage SEO to achieve your business goals.
You have high hopes for your new or redesigned website—it has an exceptional design and showcases your superior product or service. Can you expect an immediate ROI? Unless people find you online, there’s no way they’ll come to your site and possibly buy from you. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) has a big role to play.
Why do you need SEO? Here are the ways it can optimize your website for high search ranking.
- People Find Your Website
Building an online presence is the first crucial step to get your brand discovered, trusted, and loved. A good SEO strategy achieves that.
You’d want your website to show up on the first page of search results—and nowhere else. Recent studies found that 70% to 90% of clicks happen on page 1 of search results. Being on page 1 raises your chance of getting someone to click to your site, and this is where the buyer’s journey begins.
- Attract Potential Customers to Your Site
Even with the popularity of social media, search marketing still brings significant traffic for most businesses. In fact, organic search accounts for 64% of website traffic.
But more than just driving visitors to your website, SEO brings qualified leads at no cost. An inbound marketing method, SEO generates more leads than outbound marketing strategies.
People use search engines to find a specific answer or solution. If your site is on top of the search results, you provide useful information to those who need it the most.
This is what makes traffic from organic search (or unpaid search results) more valuable and cost-effective than paid advertising. With SEO, you aren’t spending money to push your brand to people who might not be interested in it.
- Increase Sales at Low Cost
Website optimization is crucial for local businesses. Rank highly in local search, and you’ll see your site visits and sales grow.
Tap local SEO to optimize your website for a particular location, so your target customers can quickly find your business online or visit your brick-and-mortar store. According to Google research, 50% of consumers who did local searches on their mobile device visited a store and made a purchase on the same day.
- Improve User Experience
User experience is a critical search engine ranking factor today. So much so that successful businesses invest in user-friendly websites, useful and relevant content, and other things that enhance their visitors’ experience.
With your website optimized for SEO, you improve user experience, retain customers, and increase conversion rates.
- Build Trust in Your Brand
A high search ranking makes you credible in the eyes of search engine users. Especially if your site ranks number 1 on Google, people will view your brand as the authority in your industry. They’ll believe you’re the best!
- Beat Your Competitors
SEO isn’t just about optimizing your website. It also monitors and analyzes what your competitors are doing, so you can improve your website and SEO strategies to outrank them.
- Strengthen Your Digital Marketing Strategy
According to a recent Marketing Dive study, 82% of marketers believe that SEO is becoming a more effective digital strategy. SEO improvement and organic presence growth are the top inbound marketing priorities of 61% of marketers in HubSpot’s 2018 State of Inbound survey.
Your competitors could be among those leveraging SEO for their marketing campaigns. If they’re stepping up their SEO game, you don’t want to be left behind, right?
For small and medium-sized businesses, SEO plays a key role in any digital marketing strategy for long-term success, particularly in expanding customer base and increasing sales.
Be ready to invest some time, as reaping the benefits of SEO doesn’t happen overnight. Let Mixolutionz help you get started. Talk to us about how to get your website on top of search results!
