If you are new to digital marketing, you probably don’t know much about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) yet. And those who are familiar with it seriously underestimate its power when it comes to online visibility and search result visibility. By using SEO effectively you can increase leads to your website tenfold and thus doubling your sales with minimum effort.
What is SEO?
SEO connects your business to your target audience online via search engines like Google or Firefox. It makes use of strategies to optimize the content on your website pages, social media, blog posts, videos etc. Optimization here will mean the search engines will find your content relevant to a search query being performed. It will then crawl, index, and rank your content in the search engine results pages. This is why doing thorough research about which keywords to use in your content is so important. Use the wrong ones and your content might get lost in a sea of other online content.
Two Types of SEO
SEO has two types: on-site SEO and off-site SEO:
On-site SEO: On-site SEO or on-page SEO focuses on making your website pages search-engine friendly. You optimize content and other elements on your website not only to make Google and other search engines find you. You also use this strategy to make your pages rank higher in the search results pages. It’s no use if Google finds your content but it’s listed on the second page…
On-site SEO strategies include the use of keywords, speeding up the load time of your website, and optimizing page titles.
Off-site SEO: Off-site SEO or off-page SEO involves all the optimization efforts that you will do outside your website. The most common strategy used in off-site SEO is building and earning links from reputable websites. These include guest blogging and social media marketing.
How Can SEO Help Your Business?
- It drives and boosts site traffic
For your business to succeed, you need exposure. Having excellent SEO will help you with online visibility, and your target audience will get to know about your business. As you become successful in creating brand awareness, this subsequently helps drive high-quality traffic to your site and social media channels. This will naturally also lead to more leads and sales. - It gives you real numbers to measure the success of your business
With the presence of Google Analytics and other web analytic tools, you can easily measure the success of your SEO strategies. These tools provide you with metrics to keep track during and the results of your digital marketing campaigns (site traffic, conversions, most visited pages, bounce rate etc.). - It adds you to the competition
More than 80% of buyers start searching for products to purchase online. So if you want to be able to compete with the hundreds of other businesses offering the same as you are, you will have to be visible online and stand out. The higher you rank on the results page, the more likely it is that traffic will flood to your website. If you keep up your SEO game you will outrank your competitors. - It builds and boosts your credibility
Having a professional website and beautiful social media pages will definitely attract potential leads and give the impression that your business is trustworthy. However, it’s the quality and consistency of your content that will help boost your business’s credibility the most. With optimized content, you will earn a better online reputation, particularly because SEO will rank it higher on the search results pages.
SEO is all about the quality and relevancy of content so you are able to gain Google’s and other search engines’ trust. Do it right and you will be helping your online business reach its goals in no time.
To learn more about SEO and how we can help you contact us today!