In the business world today, search engine optimisation is as important a tool as any to propelling a company to success. The potential that search engine optimisation – or SEO – can create for your business is necessary for any webmaster to understand.
In short, SEO is a very specific set of rules that website owners can follow to improve their search engine rankings. These rules help to optimise a website and put it in the forefront of people’s eyes online. You’ve probably heard from digital marketing experts and digital agencies everywhere that SEO is going to be a powerful marketing tool that your business should be using, but that doesn’t mean that you know what it means for your business. Having a good grasp of SEO is as important for a business owner as it is for the digital marketing team that is leading the creation and success of the website involved.
Knowing what the elements are that make up SEO is vital to understand why it is so important for your business. Search engine optimisation makes your website more visible, which means more people will click on your links and this can create more opportunities for new customers for your business. It’s also a fantastic way to increase the quality of your website: the more you understand what is driving people to click on your link, the more you can tailor your site to suit the customers. It’s a helpful tool in understanding the traffic that comes to you, and it can help you to reorganise the site to make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate. Search engines are used without a second thought, but millions of people are using them daily. Your business cannot afford to be invisible when people could be looking to you for an answer to their problem.
Once you understand that SEO can make your website better for the customers who are trying to find you, you can then look beyond this and what more it could mean for your business. Brand awareness is a huge deal for any company and SEO can help you to build those important relationships with customers and potential business allies. You must be able to position yourself in your industry so that people will want to rely on you and learn to trust you, and SEO can help you to do that. The majority of users will choose the first ten options on any search page when they are looking for a solution, and if you aren’t appearing in those options, you won’t be able to take advantage of the people you could reach. Your use of SEO can also ensure the smooth running of your business website and an optimised website is more likely to have more customer interaction, thus more sales.
The Importance Of Keywords in SEO
Most businesses now understand that keywords aren’t the most important element of your SEO, but it doesn’t mean that keywords don’t have a place. It’s first vital for you to understand that keywords aren’t just a filler; you need the right words and phrases to match with the ones that your prospects are looking for. People head to the search engines to find the content online that they need the most, which means that your keywords need to be targeted and well-researched. These are the phrases that will help your brand to connect with prospective customers. You should mix up the keywords and phrases that you use for your business website: choose those that have high search rates with low competition in your content. You can also optimise your titles and on-page SEO elements along with the keywords that you choose for your content. It’s all a balance of long-tail and short-tail words and phrases so that when a customer jumps onto Google to search for something, your website shoots to the top of the list.
Vital Content Creation
Rich content that makes sense, is witty and can draw the eye of the customer is one of the most vital pieces of the SEO puzzle. It’s the vehicle that you use for customer engagement, and once you understand how you can engage customers and include your SEO keywords in there, you’re going to have a healthy web traffic. For instance, if your business is in recruitment and you are aiming to be more visible for candidates and clients, you should build a business blog that talks to prospective candidates about interview techniques, how to dress to impress and how to build a resume and prospective clients about interview preparation. These will then be rich in SEO keywords and phrases so that when a prospect searches for that information, your website will come right up. Providing the information that a customer wants is exactly what content is used for, and then if that prospect wants to find out further information later, they’re going to remember your excellent content and find you again. It’s about building that relationship.
Types Of SEO
There are different types of SEO, including off-page SEO which involves the practice of external optimisation. This means the SEO that happens away from your main business website instead of on it. Building backlinks from outside websites to yours can tell the search engines that your website is a high-quality one, which builds trust with prospective customers. You can do this with guest blogging and creating interesting and informative infographics which will be shared. Social media is perhaps one of the best ways to share these, because your reach is going to far extend what you can manage from your business website alone.
Over half of all searches online are coming from smartphones and tablets, which is why local SEO is becoming more and more important for businesses. Restaurants, shops and places of interest should be online, because those local searches have a local intent. If you’re running a high street recruitment business and someone is looking for work, your website will come up and they’ll be able to contact you for an appointment to further their career. This means adding on your location to map websites and ensuring that your contact information is added to your website.
Why It’s All Important
Your business needs to be seen to be a success. It’s a very simple concept; you cannot make money or grow unless people can find you. A website alone is not enough when you need people to pick you out of the thousands of other businesses that can provide them with a solution. The higher you rank on search engines the more likely people can see you and click through to your website. Therefore, search engine optimisation is vital to your company website. With increased visibility comes increased web traffic, and the more traffic you have, the more conversions you can make from simple lurker to paying customer. You want to have a high authority with those who come across your website, and the more authority that you have, the more people will trust your brand and recommend you to others. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool that shouldn’t be underestimated, even in a digital world such as the one in which we live.
The result is a popular website with great backlinks from other, trusted sources, that helps your company to grow. Growth is the goal for most businesses and while SEO is complex and will take time to figure out for your business, you cannot function without it if you want your business to hit the success that you imagined for it.
