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SEO is the driving force behind all successful organic marketing campaigns. It works by modifying your content, and website design to make the website easy to index by the search engine spiders. This way, SEO helps you boost your Business website’s ranking in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), so it’s easy for target prospects to find your business and services.
Read on, to understand; the meaning of SEO, how it works, why it is important and, how to optimize your site for SEO.
What is SEO?
The abbreviations S.E.O stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of optimizing your web pages to increase its overall visibility on the search engines. This helps improve the quality and quantity of organic web traffic to your site.
How Does SEO Work?
Major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo use crawlers to gather essential and relevant information on the contents they find on the web. The crawlers then forward the results to the search engines to build an index by following a unique algorithm which matches the information with the questions.
There are a lot of factors which will influence the ranking of your site on these engines. To make this easy to understand, these factors are divided into two major branches; the On-page SEO or Onsite SEO and Off-page SEO or Off-site SEO.
On-page SEO
This involves optimizing your web page using HTML source codes and web content. Therefore, the On-page SEO factors which will influence your site’s rankings are; your site’s loading speed, the value or quality of your HTML source codes, the quality of contents you have posted on the web pages and how you structure your site.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO involves actions and processes outside your website, which influences its position on the SERP. It consists of a lot of aspects which spans across backlinking, social media attention and activities, and all the marketing activities you do, including Google My Business (GMB), and local SEO, etc.
Most marketers find Off-page SEO challenging on the grounds of backlinking because you need high-quality backlinks to point towards your site to improve its ranking. Besides, your content must scream quality, and Google may punish you if it finds out that you’re manipulating this strategy by buying the backlinks, etc.
Why Is SEO Important?
Did you know that Google records over 65,000 searches each second? And, around 40 percent of all e-commerce traffic worldwide comes from an online search. These stats show how competition to rank at the top is stiff. But then, it is still mandatory that you rank on Google’s first page for your marketing efforts to be rewarded.
Hubspot reports that 75 percent of people who search for information online don’t scroll past Google’s first page. That implies that if you appear on the 2nd 3rd or 4th pages, you still have a mammoth of a task to do. Here is a breakdown of how SEO benefits your business.
1. SEO is cheaper with higher Returns on Investment (ROI).
It’s possible to manipulate the search results and move your site higher in the search engine results page with the paid search, but it won’t pay back much. The paid search results are not only costly but also have very few returns. According to a research report published by eConsultancy, search engine users are 94 percent more likely to click on organic search results.
2. SEO helps you build strong brand authority.
Now, higher ranking on the search engines is as a result of proper web design with beautiful UI, and also relevant content that meets the needs of users. Search engine users also believe that only reputable sites rank higher so it will play a part in boosting your reputability.
3. SEO helps you increase click-through rates, and enhances your social promotion.
When your content is found on the first pages of search results, it means more users will click it. This will result in higher click rates and more conversion. Moreover, if you share valuable contents on the site, you will prompt social media sharing, which is also excellent in increasing sales and brand dominance.
4. SEO also impacts the purchase decision of your target audience.
This is indirectly tied to the reputability aspect. Search engine users will believe that you’re reputable, and most likely choose you over other competitors.
5. It also enhances user experience.
When your site ranks higher, it also implies that your website is well optimized, and probably has a good loading speed, something critical to the user experience.
How Do I Optimize My Site For SEO?
In optimizing your site for SEO, here are four critical factors you should first consider.
1. Your business and goals. It is essential to note down your goals before getting into site optimization. The goals here will help you know which audience to target. Once you know the right audience to target, it becomes easier making the right decisions on the right content to post, which will fascinate them. It will also help you find a suitable campaign for them.
2. Offsite SEO. It is important to note that offsite SEO is not just about link building or outsourcing links. The outbound traffic
you get for your site should not only be from big players in your industry but also be in high quantity. You may also need to improve your social media game, get your site listed on Google My Business and other local directories, etc.
3. Type of content. The contents you post on your website will either harm or improve your SEO. You will need to work on increasing Click through Rates (CTR) and minimize bounce rates.
4. Inbound links. This involves the links you embed in your contents that direct your web visitors to other valuable contents on the site.
Ensure the inbound links lead to high-value contents that will increase the engagement of the visitor on the specific page.
Tips for Optimizing Your Site for SEO
Ready to take your search engine ranking to the next level? Here are the golden tips to see you through.
Analyze user behavior. If you have a site already, it’s crucial to analyze the user behavior on the site. Either way, if you are just starting, you may also analyze user behavior on competitor sites to see what the visitors do on the site, which pages they spend the most times on, and also compare the bounce rates.
You may also need to check how people find the site as well as the conversion rates etc. Once you’ve understood the user behavior, it will
be easy to create relevant contents that match their needs.
Do intensive keyword research. Search engines match queries with the keywords found on specific contents. It’s critical that you perform exhaustive keyword research to help you find the right keywords that your target audience commonly uses in their search queries. There are a lot of keyword research tools online that should help you find high-value keywords for the same.
Provide a valuable long-form of contents. Buffer suggests that you provide web contents averaging 1600 words in length. This will help increase engagement, and most importantly answer the questions the visitor was looking for. Long-form contents will also help you rank for some keywords you didn’t even think of.
Optimize your site for both On-page and Off-page SEO.
Here, you will get into technical and content aspects of your site optimization like optimizing your URLs, the metatags, and headlines, etc. You will also need to be sure to use keywords appropriately and avoid overstuffing them.
Under this tip, you may also need to do some influencer campaigns, do some guest blogging, outsource backlinks, and list the business
in local directories, etc.
Enhance the speed of your web pages. Did you know that your site’s loading speed has an impact on user experience? Well, over 70% of online shoppers who get soar experience in terms of site’s loading speed will blacklist the site, and not come back again. You will, therefore, have to work on your site’s loading speed, to make it faster. You can use Google’s Page Speed Insights to review your site’s performance.
Optimize your website for mobile. It is also prudent that you optimize the site for mobile phones too. Be sure to make it friendly as most users today use their phones to perform online searches on the go. The key to success with this is adopting a site layout that supports both desktop and mobile devices, etc.
Get Professional Help
Your SEO can get messy if you don’t know what to optimize, what to look for or you’re just testing waters. If you don’t fully understand SEO, it is advisable that you seek the help of a reputable search engine optimization company. Innovative Flare can help you with all technical and content aspects of SEO, call today to get started.
When looking for the right company, be sure to check for the experience, and most importantly, reviews. The online reviews should help you know about their services, and the experience of past clients they had served. Finally, they should also be able to model their pricing to match your budget, whether it’s a small business or an established one.
Take Away
SEO ranking algorithms change, but the rules remain the same: Relevant web content, which offers the highest value, will always win. If you like this content, be sure to save this page in your bookmarks so you can check it anytime you’re optimizing your site for SEO. Also, remember to follow us for more clever hacks to outrank your competitors.