For a growing business, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a crucial aspect to consider when planning digital marketing campaigns. A reliable SEO agency can help your business to gain traction in a crowded online marketplace, and equip you to compete and thrive in today’s digital economy.
SEO: The Basics
SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is a set of processes used to enhance websites in order to make them appear more relevant to searches performed by potential customers. Broadly speaking, SEO aims to increase the number of clicks on a given website through organic search engine results.
SEO does this through a combination of on-site and off-site factors. On-site factors include the technical make-up of your website, including URLs, titles, and meta tags, and the content that you present on your site. Off-site factors include the backlinks (hyperlinks) that exist outside of your direct control, such as the blogs and forums that are linked to your site. Incoming links from reputable websites will help to drive traffic to your site.
When optimizing a website, the goal is to improve the ranking of the content within a set time frame. The process of improving a website’s ranking is called “dynamic optimization,” and it entails monitoring the performance of your site and making continual adjustments to increase your rankings.
Why SEO?
Why SEO? The simple answer is: because search engines direct people to your website. Forrester Research Inc. estimates that 64% of American adults use search engines to find information online. That’s nearly a billion people searching for something every day.
If your website isn’t listed on the first page of results when someone searches for your product or service, then you’re losing out on a huge chunk of potential revenue.
Also, SEO is one of the few metrics that can be measured with precision. Unlike most marketing metrics, you can tell what part of the work is responsible for a particular increase in traffic. For example, if you notice that a blog post you published 7 months ago is now bringing in twice as much traffic as the previous one you published, then you can attribute this directly to the content of that blog post.
The Importance Of SEO For E-commerce
If your business is selling a product or offering a service that people can find, read about, or search for online, then SEO is crucial. Otherwise, your efforts are likely to go to waste.
SEO is especially important for businesses that work online. E-commerce businesses that don’t optimize their sites for search motors will find it difficult to compete with those that do.
Optimizing a site for SEO can be challenging. There are just so many moving parts and it’s difficult to keep track of what is responsible for an increase in search traffic. However, with a little bit of effort, it’s possible to make significant gains in terms of organic search traffic. Here are some of the basics you need to know about SEO.
On-Site SEO
On-Site SEO focuses on improving the ranking of your site within the search engines. This includes things like improving the structure and content of your site, as well as ensuring that the URLs of your site are semantically relevant.
Structuring your site around a logical hierarchy of topics, with clearly identified headings and subheadings, will make it far easier to understand and optimize. Consider what information the user might need to know and use the words and phrases that convey that information plainly and accurately. This will increase the odds of gaining trust and boosting your conversion rate.
While content is important for drawing in potential customers, the layout and design of your site play a crucial role in ensuring that they stay and engage with your offering. Designing your website with SEO in mind will make a massive difference in terms of how well it performs when a user searches for something. This is especially important for e-commerce sites as it will affect the way your products are displayed to the user. If everything looks the same, and nothing seems to stand out, then it’s likely that you’ll lose a lot of potential sales. So, make sure you design your website with the search engine in mind.
Off-Site SEO
Off-Site SEO focuses on increasing the number of websites that link to your site, helping to boost your rankings within the search engines. This is done through what is known as “link building,” which entails obtaining guest posts on high-quality websites, joining social media communities, and running branded content campaigns on third party websites.
Off-Site SEO is a lot more complicated and involves a lot more effort than On-Site SEO. It’s important to remember that if you’re only focusing on one aspect of SEO—either On-Site or Off-Site—then you’re potentially overlooking a massive chunk of SEO work. It’s always best to approach SEO as a combination of both On-Site and Off-Site factors. This is what will ensure that your efforts are paid off in spades and that you compete and thrive in today’s digital economy.