What is SEO?
What is SEO?
SEO is a term in the digital marketing world that has grown in importance for building a business’s online presence. Due to its ever-increasing importance, it is crucial to understand what SEO is and how it works. What does SEO mean? SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. This is how search engines rank your website for consumers to find. It’s also different from Pay Per Click (PPC). With PPC, also known as Google Ads, the advertiser is charged every time someone clicks on the listing that the business is paying for. This process takes place when the advertiser bids on keywords that they want to be found on. Once the bid is won, the business will appear at the top of the search results. SEO on the other hand is an organic way to boost where you appear on search engines, which means not only does it deliver longer-lasting results, but it’s a heck of a lot more cost-efficient!
How Does SEO Work?
Understanding How Search Engines Work
Understanding how SEO works is crucial to optimizing your SEO strategy. There are several key parts to how to effectively create your SEO strategy.
- Crawling: Search Engines crawl websites to look for links to find easy website navigation for its users
- Indexing: The content and data of a website is discovered and added to a database
- Ranking: complex algorithms in the search engine will rank your website based on whether your website or webpage seems relevant and has high-quality content to show to a searcher
Researching
Research is going to take up a big portion of your time in strategizing an SEO strategy. You want to know who your audience is. Knowing your audience will help you understand what your clients are looking for and what questions they might have. Keyword research will also be a big part of your research time. Finding relevant keywords and locations that your customers are looking for is important so you can create pages centered around these phrases and optimize your pages to be found. This will also show you the demands and competition you’ll have for these keywords. Make sure you check to see what your competition is doing too. See where your competitors are on different search engines and what keywords they might be using. What are their strengths and weaknesses? What keywords are they ranking for? Researching your website is also helpful in the research stage. Website research can help you uncover opportunities and issues on your website that might be preventing your website from ranking higher.
Planning
One of the biggest parts of the planning process is setting a budget. Just like other marketing efforts, you’ll also want to set a goal for your SEO strategy. Make sure that it is a goal that can be tracked so you can compare the results. You’ll also want to decide how you want to handle your project, whether it be handled internally, externally, or both. Don’t forget to document the process so you can see what strategies work and which ones aren’t working for you. If you need to tweak a project, you’ll be able to look back and see what you’ve already done and ensure you don’t accidentally repeat a keyword that didn’t work before.
Creating/ Implementing
Once you’ve finalized your research and planned out how to execute it, you’re ready to create new content! If you see some areas to improve in your research, you can also make some changes to pages that might need some updates. Updating old pages is just as important as creating a new one. Delete or remove old pages that have low-quality content or no relevancy. These pages don’t benefit your website at all and can even negatively affect your ranking on Google.
Monitor and Maintain
Keep track of what pages are performing well and make adjustments to pages that aren’t. See what keywords are ranking well and check to see what keywords are not ranking as high
Different Types of SEO
Different types of SEO play a vital role in your strategy. Below, you will find the different types of SEO that impact an SEO strategy:
- Technical SEO: completing activities that are relevant to improving SEO but not related to the content
- Content Optimization (On-Page SEO): Having content that is relevant to your page while providing users a great experience. (finding the right keywords during the research stage is of utmost importance for on-page SEO)
- Brand and Authority Building (Off-Page SEO): Enhance your website’s content in areas outside of your website, most commonly done through backlinks
How Does SEO Impact My Business?
It might not seem like a big deal, but SEO is one of the leading factors in gaining credibility with consumers online and expanding your business. SEO boosts your website and company’s visibility. If you have an effective SEO strategy, you could be boosted onto Google’s first search page, which is where a lot of consumers find the answers they are searching for. Most people rarely click on anything past the first page of Google. Making sure you are found on the first page of Google is key to finding quality leads and expanding brand awareness.
Not only does SEO boost your website’s visibility, but it also builds your credibility with Google. The more relevant your content is, the more credible you will appear to Google. Once you have an established relationship with Google, your pages will start appearing more in other relevant searches.
One of the most impactful benefits of SEO marketing is that it is a cost-effective digital marketing approach. Unlike PPC, SEO is an organic way to market your business. According to a 2019 BrightEdge study, organic search delivers 53% of all website traffic. If you create a new page on your website and utilize your new, relevant keywords you have created a new marketing channel for consumers to find you in the search engine and you did it at little to no cost!
Last but certainly not least is that you can receive measurable results. Using your website’s analytics will show you what pages consumers are visiting, how much they are engaged with the webpage, and other important information. With all of the information easily accessible within your analytics, you can see if your SEO strategy is working and formulate new ways to improve strategies that appear to not work as well.
Let The Gratzi Help You With Your SEO Strategy
SEO is vital to growing your business’s visibility, gaining more high-quality leads, and gaining credibility with the Google search engine. This low-cost approach is a great way to create new customers and ensure that your current customers work with you again. Don’t have the time to build your own SEO strategy from scratch or need help refining the one you already have? Not to worry! The Gratzi, Inc. has been helping businesses boost their SEO and Move Up On Google. Contact us today to learn more and create a personalized SEO strategy for your business.
