What is SEO and why is it so important

A powerful digital presence is essential in today’s day and age as you’ve probably heard. It is crucial for digital marketing purposes that your business uses search engine optimisation to optimise your website for success. If you don’t know anything about SEO and how important it is, here’s everything you need to know about SEO and why it is crucial in today’s digital world.

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, this is an effective, customer-centric digital marketing process that utilizes various tactical strategies to improve your website’s visibility and presence. These strategies drive your website to appear closer to the top positions in the search results of Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other search engines.

As search is one of the leading mechanisms in which people find content online, ranking higher in the search results of search engines can cause a surge of traffic to a website. Displaying your content to a relevant audience can lead to attracting existing and prospective customers to your company. SEO marketing works, and proper implementation can help anyone generate greats results which in turn can lead to sales.

How does SEO work?

SEO involves “organic” ranking, which means you don’t pay any money to be in that space. As search engines want to provide their users with the best service possible. Search engines have spiders, automated robots that scan different websites to understand what the site is about, the quality of the website and its readability. This provides the searcher with relevant results to answer what they are searching for.

As these spiders collect different kinds of information about your website and the pages that make up your site it allows them to easily determine when to serve a searcher a page on your site based on keywords used or other strategies that have been implemented. They store things like social signs, title tags, backlinks, internal linkings, page speed, etc. Due to there being over 200 ranking factors used by Google in their algorithm, there are factors that can be taken to try to optimize a website.

There are both on-page and off-page ranking factors that decide how well your site is optimized, and therefore how well it ranks.

Who needs SEO

Small businesses and startups both have a limited customer base, resources, and revenue and have a limited target audience. For starters, SEO is an economical marketing strategy and does not cost too much for an initial investment. This softens the burden on a business’s budget and leaves room to scale which is very important for expanding startups and businesses. Small businesses can also obtain an edge over competitors by targeting niches within their known demographics, by using the custom dashboard and tailored reporting received from SEO tracking mechanisms.

Specific small businesses that would benefit from implementing effective SEO strategies:

1. SaaS and online service companies.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies have exponentially grown and they are tied to the digital area exclusively. SEO is important as standard advertising will do nothing to benefit your business due to the fact that you need customers trying and using your products. SEO creates a robust flow of traffic and web users to your site.

2. Niche companies.

Companies that cater to a very specific target audience need SEO as they will need to target their relevant audience, in order to reach target sales.

3. local businesses

Local SEO operates on an algorithm different from national SEO.

So it is important that they are high up in the search results similar to the reason as niche companies, they have a smaller targeted audience and they need specific SEO to reach potential customers.

4. Medical professionals.

Medical professionals operate locally, giving them a competitive edge in the market and the majority of people search for a provider when they’re experiencing symptoms or pain which means that having better SEO strategies will allow your targeted audience to access your website easily.

5. Legal professionals.

their potential targeted audiences are almost definitely performing searches to find solutions to their legal problems. The majority of lawyers and legal service providers also operate locally, allowing them to potentially capitalize on local search as well.

6. Maintenance professionals.

It is tied with local SEO and individuals may need their services in an emergency situation, you’ll have a better chance of converting potential searchers due to their immediate need of assistance and your business’s visibility.

7. Restaurants and bars.

Restaurants and bars also need SEO because they are tied to a physical location, in the food sector there is a lot of competition so having dedicated SEO will enhance the search visibility to get people into your restaurant.

Different types of SEO

There are three main types of SEO you need for a balanced organic search strategy: on-page SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO. By organising the strategy into three separate parts it is easier to execute and implement your optimization plans.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is the optimization that happens on the website itself, ultimately ensuring that the content is of high quality, answers searchers’ queries, and optimizes users’ experiences, These factors will ensure that your website will rank high on the search engines.

Common types of on-page SEO techniques:

– Title tags: using descriptive and interesting titles with keywords can improve rankings and the click-through rate from search engine results.

– URL structure: Having descriptive and concise URLs can improve your site’s rankings in the search results.

– Heading tags: Using h1, h2 and h3 heading tags can be an organisational tool used.

– Internal links: Linking to other pages on your site from within your content can improve ranking and crawling.

– Image alt tags

– Keyword targeting

– Optimising site speed

– Making the site mobile friendly

– Meta description

– Page data

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of making sure that a website meets the technical requirements of contemporary search engines with the goal of improved organic rankings.

Common types of technical SEO techniques:

– Crawling

– indexing

– rendering

– website architecture.

– UI/UX

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO happens outside of the website that is intended to increase ranking within the search engine results pages. 

Common types of off-page techniques:

– Backlinks: are a key signal to determine the popularity and authority of domains and web pages.

– Social media marketing

– Influencer outreach

– Guest blogging

Why is SEO so important?

Search engines serve millions of users per day looking for answers to their queries or for a solution. If you have a website, blog, or online store, SEO can help you get free targeted traffic from search engines. SEO is important as the ranking of your website determines the amount and consistency that web users are interacting with your website. 70% of people are more likely to click on one of the top 5 suggestions in the search engine results pages, that is why you want to be one of those top 5 websites. SEO ensures that your website is where it is meant to be if you are the top-ranking site, it is because of the hard work that you put into it, and this shows that you deserve to be there.

Due to the fact that users trust search engines, achieving a top spot in search engine rankings, signals to searchers that your site is a credible source. The more clicks and traffic you generate by top-ranking will increase sales and can attract prospective customers to your business.SEO ultimately improves user experience, making it more likely for customers to buy regularly from your business.

Advantages of SEO

There are many many benefits of SEO, these are:

– SEO targets quality traffic

– You can move ahead of the competition

– Better User Experience

– Builds Trust & Credibility

– Is Relatively Cheap

– Being readily accessible

– Trustworthy web experience for potential customers

– Brings in customers via organic search

– Improves your brand awareness

– fulfilling a need

– It is trackable

Why Should You Hire an SEO Specialist?

SEO is an effective long-term, ongoing strategy for generating revenue. Hiring an SEO specialist helps your business earn results by providing you access to advanced marketing technology, expert’s experience and knowledge.

Every cent you spend on optimising your website, you get back through an increase of traffic, a better conversion rate between visitors to customers, and you build your brand online in the most diligent way.

At Digital One Agency we provide SEO specialists that will analyse your data, provide detailed performance statistics and reports, increase your ranking and create a better experience for your customers. We provide non lock-in monthly contract options to suit your business, contact us today.