17 May What Is SEO And What Are Its Benefits
Companies venturing into the digital age, face a whole new set of marketing challenges. For any business out there with any kind of online presence, search engine optimization (SEO) is an extremely important way to ensure a website is visible to the key audiences. But for those who aren’t necessarily digital marketing experts (and even for some who are) SEO can be a confusing concept to understand, let alone implement. That’s why we’re breaking down what SEO is, and how it can benefit your business.
What Is SEO And How Does It Work?
There’s essentially a sea of content and information out there on the internet, that’s growing exponentially every day. Search engines act as modern-day digital libraries to help organize and keep this information accessible to users. Search engines crawl websites to interpret and rate this information, so search engine optimization (SEO) is the act of making your web pages more visible and higher ranked by the engine.
Search engines, Google among the most famous of them, use algorithms to help rank content according to the perceived quality and value based on a specific search. Good SEO can increase your organic as well as paid reach, and it consists of both on-site and off-site strategies. So let’s look at what those are.
On-site SEO
On-site SEO is everything that’s contained within your website that is visible to your users, from content heading to image descriptions, but perhaps the most important factor in the on-site SEO is a page’s metadata. When we refer to page’s metadata we mean web page titles and descriptions. Optimizing the page metadata to include appropriate sets of keywords or search terms indicate the relevance of your content to your users. However, keep in mind in order to rank at the first results, you want to build your page to cater directly to your target audience and provide the correct information that the audience searches for on the given search query.
On-site SEO keeps evolving, as Google keeps on publishing new information and guidelines on how you should present information. The latest significant algorithm update concerning content was BERT, an algorithm that helps Google understand search queries for specific languages. Another important consideration is the “quality” of your webpage or EAT (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness).
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your site and server to be easily accessible to search engine crawlers. Search engine crawlers have a limited crawl budget, meaning it can crawl a limited number of pages they can crawl; leading crawlers to non-indexable pages or unoptimized pages will have a negative impact on your rankings and also pages of high importance may not be indexed and as a result, shown in the search engine results page. To check if a page of high importance is indexed and shown in Google type “site:yoursite.com/page”
There are many technical SEO factors that we will cover in detail in a future blog post, subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date. Meanwhile, check our new blog post about Google Core Web Vitals for 2020.
Off-site SEO (linkbuilding)
On-site SEO is only a part of the equation – to build trust in your site and its content, you’ll need to implement an off-site SEO strategy as well. Off-site SEO, or link-building refers to having other websites link to your content. This can be in form of blogs, articles or other material, but both the quantity and quality of your backlinks matter when it comes to achieving a high rank.
For instance, being frequently referenced by small personal blogs may somewhat raise your credibility, it’s truly reputable and trusted sources that give your company the most marketing juice. It goes without saying, but a high number of backlinks from reputable sources translates to the most impact on your SEO.
How Is SEO Important To Your Business?
Now more than ever, the digitalization of businesses across the World is imminent. Which means, sooner or later, you’ll need to start competing for an online audience if you want to succeed. Strong SEO strategies may not have an immediate effect, but they do lay the basic foundation for your business’s online visibility. If you’re still not convinced that your business could benefit from an SEO strategy, here are a few things to consider:
- SEO is the most Cost-Effective Channel: PPC campaigns require an ongoing monthly budget to be spent in order to attract users and get clicks. Also, studies show that as the online marketplace becomes more and more competitive the cost per click continues to grow. SEO and content marketing can generate a number of clicks for a budget that none of the PPC mediums could compete with.
- SEO Nurtures your Audience leading to more Conversions: SEO helps you understand the user and the buyer’s path that leads to a purchase. If you develop the right content strategy that will be visible in the buyers’ research checkpoints it will to higher conversions for your product or service.
- SEO Builds Trust to your Brand: When a user searches for a product the organic results are more credible than the search ads. If you want to build trust and authority around your brand, having your site ranking at the top results of the first page is a major trust signal to the buyer’s mindset.
Final Thoughts:
While SEO is a highly technical field, there are some very human aspects to it as well. Strive for content that’s technically sound in terms of keywords and structure, but valuable enough to resonate with your target audience.
If you wish to level up your SEO game, check our SEO services, and schedule a call with an SEO expert from Inbound Hunters.