Just finished setting up a great website? After all the effort you put into your site, you may have expected traffic and leads to start coming in. However, you’re probably starting to realize that nobody is coming to visit and that you have to put in a strong effort into promoting your site. One of the best ways to market your site is through search engine optimization (SEO).
What Is SEO?
To understand what SEO is, you have to start by looking at how people find things online. Most people will go to the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing and enter keywords to search for. This results in a list of search results that lists websites targeted towards the keywords users are searching for. The search engines return ranks with the results based on what is deemed as most relevant to the users.
SEO is a form of digital marketing. The purpose of SEO is to optimize your website for these keywords so that you rank at the top of the search listings. This involves two major factors. One is on-page optimization, which is how you structure your site and your pages. The other is off-page optimization, which is building links, social signals, and reviews that point towards your pages.
Why Is SEO So Important?
You may be wondering why SEO should be a priority when there are other marketing channels you can invest in. There are several reasons why SEO is becoming more important. First, a successful SEO campaign can bring in a consistent amount of high volume traffic to your website. While an SEO campaign can take some time to build, it is quite easy to maintain once you get things going. This makes it easy to scale your campaign.
Second, the traffic is very targeted. It’s easy to determine the intent behind many keywords. This allows you to set up your pages for lead generation or sales conversion for specific keywords and see great results. It’s also easy to test keywords as you can simply set up a Google Ads or Bing account in order to run ads and see if the traffic converts into quality leads or sales. This allows you to focus your SEO campaign on keywords that work.
Third, SEO helps your company build credibility and authority. Many people rely on the search engine results to provide them with a list of reputable businesses. That’s why ranking in the top results gives your business an advantage over competitors that may not be doing SEO or have low rankings. Aside from credibility and authority, SEO gives your company the exposure it needs to start building a brand.
SEO Is Always Changing
The idea of building an SEO campaign can be daunting to many business owners. Many businesses have years of experience and progress in the search engines, so it can seem like an uphill battle trying to outrank them. If you feel this way, it’s important to know that the algorithm on how websites are ranked changes every few months, giving you the opportunity to enter the market. For example, here are the ways that some of the search rankings are determined in 2018.
In addition, quality is rewarded more than quantity in SEO these days. A website with fewer links but higher quality links and content can outrank a website with thousands of low/medium quality links and content. That’s why a lot of emphasis needs to be put on how the SEO campaign is built. As a result, it helps to work with an experienced SEO professional. If you want to start a campaign yourself, here are some basic SEO tips to get you started in the right direction.
Takeaway
There are many benefits of SEO. It’s one of the best ways to generate quality leads and traffic to your website. It may not be the ideal marketing channel to pursue for everyone. But whether or not you plan on investing heavily into SEO, it’s always a smart idea to build your site as if you were planning on launching an SEO campaign. Doing so will make it easier to transition into a full SEO campaign in the future. It also makes your website more user-friendly and can even result in some free traffic.
