In business and marketing, SEO is the practice of improving your online visibility in organic search results to increase the quantity and quality of your website traffic. Overall, this digital marketing strategy aims to generate revenue and growth for your company through increased online visibility.SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing because people conduct trillions of searches every year, often with commercial intent to find information about products and services. Search is often the primary source of digital traffic for brands and complements other marketing channels. Greater visibility and ranking higher in search results than your competition can have a material impact on your bottom line.Maybe you’ve heard that SEO can help drive traffic to your website and get you higher rankings, but you aren’t really sure how it works or what areas to focus on? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to find out what every digital marketer should know about SEO.
What is SEO in Marketing?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” but to fully answer your question, the simple meaning of SEO in marketing your business is the process of improving your website so that search engines like Google are more likely to show your business in users’ search results.Website SEO involves technical optimization, as well as researching keywords, implementing those keywords into your site, and continuously improving your content to make it easier for people to find. If that still sounds complicated, that’s okay. There’s an easier way to manage your own business SEO efforts.Search engines such as Google and Bing use bots to crawl pages on the web, going from site to site, collecting information about those pages and putting them in an index. Think of the index like a giant library where a librarian can pull up a book (or a web page) to help you find exactly what you’re looking for at the time.Next, algorithms analyze pages in the index, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors or signals, to determine the order pages should appear in the search results for a given query. In our library analogy, the librarian has read every single book in the library and can tell you exactly which one will have the answers to your questions.Unlike paid search ads, you can’t pay search engines to get higher organic search rankings, which means SEO experts have to put in the work.The search algorithms are designed to surface relevant, authoritative pages and provide users with an efficient search experience. Optimizing your site and content with these factors in mind can help your pages rank higher in the search results.What are the 4 Types of SEO?SEO is one of the most effective digital marketing tactics you can invest your time into, and there are a variety of ways you can take advantage of the practice.Here are four key types of SEO that you can get started on.1. On-Page SEOOn-page SEO, also sometimes referred to as on-site SEO, is the process of optimizing the content on your website. This can include your body copy, keywords, headers, meta titles, meta descriptions, images, and more.Some tips for on-page SEO include:
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As a result, their article holds the top spot in Google rankings for that keyword! 2. White spaceVisual design is one of the primary contributors to the overall user experience on your website. If your site has a poor appearance, users won’t want to stay on it. And when users keep clicking away, that tells Google to rank you lower.Visual design is composed of various elements, including everything from color schemes to page structure.But one of the main visual elements on a site is white space. White space is simply the space on a page that isn’t taken up by text, images, or other visual elements. Imagine the difference between a page completely packed with text and a page broken up into small blurbs and paragraphs.Which would you rather read? Probably the latter.Sun Auto Service demonstrates this principle seamlessly in its written web content.In their informational pieces, they make sure to break up text into small sections. With headings, images, and white space inserted between the paragraphs, it makes things feel far less cluttered, leading to easier reading and happier users.3. Compelling title tag and meta descriptionSEO starts with getting your content ranking in Google, but it doesn’t stop there. Once your content is ranking, you have to convince users that your site is the result they should click on. If you don’t, you won’t stay high in rankings for long, since Google will assume your site isn’t valuable to users.To gain clicks, you need to give each of your pages a compelling title tag and meta description, which together make up the blurb that appears in search results.The title and meta should make it clear what your business is offering and why users should click.The Exterminator in Wyoming does a fantastic job with this tactic. Their title tag makes it clear what they do and where they operate. Their meta description, meanwhile, provides a compelling call to action (CTA) and highlights their “years of experience.”4. Reputable backlinksWhen Google ranks your site, one of the things it considers is how reputable you are. If Google views your site as authoritative in your industry, it will rank you higher — and one of the best ways to seem more reputable is to earn backlinks, which are critical to SEO.Backlinks are simply where reputable sites in your industry link to your content.When Google sees a known authoritative site linking to you, it assumes you’re authoritative too and ranks you higher. To earn backlinks, you can look for broken links on reputable sites in your industry and recommend that the site replace them with new links to your content.Sweetwater offers one of the most impressive examples of SEO in this regard.
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A short piece on their website entitled “True Stereo” earned a backlink from Wikipedia, which lists it as a reference on its “Stereophonic Sound” page. While Wikipedia links are NoFollow — which means they don’t directly impact rankings like most backlinks — the fact that Google consistently ranks Wikipedia so high in search results still benefits Sweetwater significantly, since visitors to that page may encounter the link.It’s no coincidence that that same Sweetwater piece ranks on page one for the keyword “true stereo!”5. Fast page speedsDid you know that 83% of users expect pages to load in three seconds or less? If your site doesn’t meet this expectation, you’ll have quite a few users bouncing from your site — which will tell Google that your site isn’t useful to them, causing it to rank lower.To improve your page speeds, you can implement techniques like:
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You can check your website’s page speeds on Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, which will give it a score between zero and 100. For an example of a site that’s managed to achieve an impressively high score, we can look at USA Flooring. USA Flooring’s desktop site earns a 93 in PageSpeed Insights, meaning they probably don’t see many users jump ship during the loading process.What is the Purpose of SEO?While there is a way to maximize results, it is almost impossible to fully manipulate search algorithms. Businesses often look to the shortest path toward ideal results with the least amount of effort, but SEO requires a lot of action and time. There is no SEO strategy where something can be changed today with the expectation of clear results tomorrow. SEO is a long-term project, with daily action and constant activity.Search engines use bots to crawl all website pages, downloading and storing that information into a collection known as an index. This index is like a library and when someone searches for something in it, the search engine acts as the librarian. The search engine pulls and displays relevant information from the search query and shows users content related to what they were looking for. Search engine algorithms analyze web pages in the index to determine the order those pages should be displayed on the SERP.Search engine optimization is an essential marketing activity to make a website or business visible on the web. But it also provides several other benefits to companies.Builds trust and credibilitySites that rank high on SERPs are considered to be of the highest quality and most trustworthy. Results shown on the first page are the most relevant, resulting in more credibility for the business or website. Having the right content on the site and a good user experience will help the website rank higher.Provides a competitive advantageWhen good SEO is deployed consistently, those that do it more and better will outrank the competition. Many businesses feel they cannot afford to not be on the first page of a search result. But if a team works toward that goal and shows ahead of the competition, they will have a competitive edge.Reaches more peopleSEO helps attract any user with intent at any time, regardless of phase of the customer journey that user is in. It relies on keywords and phrases to attract audiences to specific products and services. Businesses can create a list of keywords for which they would like to rank, then build content around those keywords.Supports content marketingBy having a list of keywords to rank for and building content around those keywords, users are more likely to find the information they seek. Content and SEO work in harmony with each other. A site will rank better by creating useful, high-quality content that is optimized for those keywords. Ensuring the keywords are present in headings, meta descriptions and the body of the content will improve rankings for those terms.Ranks better in local searchesThe use of local searches are becoming more common, with users looking for products or services “near me.” To improve listings in these searches, a company can create a Google My Business account and optimize the listing for local searches. Along with that and the localized content on the website, a user will be more likely to see local search results in their queries.Understand web environmentUsers that stay up to date on the ever-changing internet will be better able to execute the ongoing SEO needs for a website. By staying up to date, businesses can better understand how search works and make more informed decisions on how to change and adapt their strategies.Relatively inexpensiveTo have an effective SEO strategy, companies need to invest in the time and resources to be effective. There are companies that can be hired as SEO experts to manage the strategies, but companies with the right team in place can do it themselves.Get quantifiable resultsThere are tools and analytics data that can be tapped into to measure the effectiveness of SEO efforts. Google Analytics can provide comprehensive data on organic traffic. Data includes pages that customers engaged with and keywords used in the search. That data can then be cross-referenced with intended actions taken to see how SEO played a role in customer engagement or acquisition.What are SEO Principles?Here are 5 essential SEO principles every web designer should know before they launch their new website.1. Site StructureThe structure of your site is important for visitors and search engine crawlers alike. Crawlers are bots whose primary task is discovering new or updated content and potentially adding it to its index. An index is the giant list of URLs that search engines store and serve to people searching through a search engine. This process of discovery and indexation is how your site can be displayed to people using a search engine. And as 93% of web experiences start with a search engine, it is essential that these crawlers can discover and therefore index your content.There are four main things that you can do to ensure your site structure is helping visitors and crawls discover your content.