Search engine optimisation, or SEO, can make a huge difference to your business.
But how does SEO help your business, and how does SEO play a role in helping your business grow online?
What is SEO?
SEO is
Of course, people focus on optimising for Google as it is so dominant, but Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and many others are widely used. But they mostly use similar rules to Google to determine where sites rank.
In terms of what SEO actually involves, it’s
Not only is it about climbing the search results, but it’s also about improving the quality of organic traffic you are getting to your site from search engines such as Google.
Google and other search engines crawl sites, look for content and index them. This is essentially a huge database it retrieves results from. By indexing this content, Google can identify what content is about and return them when someone searches a term that is best answered by that content.
When a search engine receives a search, it compares this with the indexed pages and retrieves relevant results. So SEO is just about ensuring your site and content is deemed to be the most relevant content for search terms which are most relevant or lucrative to your business.
How does SEO help business?
SEO helps businesses in a number of ways, but we can cover a few of the essential points that
More website traffic
Your website will receive more traffic, which means you are likely to capture more potential customers and gain more leads or sales in the process.
More relevant organic traffic
If you are doing your SEO correctly, then you will be ranking for terms that actually matter to your business.
There’s no point in ranking for terms which won’t bring in business or do your business some benefit. You need to attract people who actually want to do business with you. And you do this by finding the keywords you want to rank for that show the intent that someone is looking for a product or service like yours. Then you ensure you rank for that term. If you do, then anyone searching that term will click your link and end up on your site.
More conversions and improved conversion rate
With more relevant traffic rolling in, it means there are more potential customers on your site who will be more inclined to do business with you. And because more relevant people are on your site, they will bring more conversions, which improves the percentage of people converting on your site.
Improved brand awareness
Getting your brand in front of the eyeballs of people looking for relevant products, services or other information can be very powerful for branding.
Even if you can’t reach the number 1 spot for a particular term, getting your brand name in the top 10 can really put you on the map. Albeit, the digital map.
If you keep popping up for a lot of terms people are searching for, it’s a matter of time until people head to your site to see what you are all about. And that’s when they realise your business holds the answers for them. And then your rankings will improve and it’s an endless cycle.
Improved customer website experience
At the heart of SEO is proving to Google that your content is relevant, but Google also wants to give people searching on Google the best experience.
So many of the SEO tactics out there simply give people on your site the best experience possible. By giving them a smooth experience, Google will see this and reward it, so you will overtake others in the search results.
Simply put, the better and easier your website is to use, the better you will rank. If your competitor has lots of relevant content but is awful to navigate or browse, then you stand a chance of overtaking their content.
Engage your customers
By providing SEO-related content online, you will build relationships with potential customers searching for information, products or services.
By offering them free information in the form of blog posts or other content marketing methods, it solidifies your brand in their mind, and means they will consider you when it comes to purchasing.
Get your business found in the best place
Google has become the first place people look for near enough any information.
Whether it’s general information, specialised information, the weather, currency conversion, calculations – you name it, Google answers.
So getting your business found on the biggest hub of information on the planet has never been more crucial. If you aren’t being found, you are missing out on traffic and business.
Google is the most visited website in the world, and for most websites, organic traffic makes up the biggest portion of their traffic. Which again, is more than likely mostly made up of Google traffic. Google traffic is usually the primary source of traffic and business for many businesses.
Trust and credibility
Getting found on Google and search engines builds up your brand to be credible and trustworthy by people searching for terms relevant to your business.
SEO also includes getting links to your site – which Google views as the fact that your site is credible. If people are linking to content on your site, it must be good and worth looking at. So it improves your rankings as people searching on Google may find it useful too. User behaviour also comes into play, so if people trust your brand and site, Google
The more your brand appears in search results, the more people will trust your brand. And the more people that trust your brand, the more people will view your content and potentially link to your site.
Authority has to be built up over time – but it is worth it.
Get found when customers are researching
Google will be the first place many people begin their research into specific products or services. So if you aren’t being found, you won’t be considered. Your competition will be happy to be considered in your place.
The buying process often starts with a Google, and so you must ensure your business enters their mind before anyone else does.
If you’re looking to get found online, we offer SEO services that help businesses achieve their business goals.
