Recently, owning a business website has become more critical than ever, but what good is a website if no one can find it? After all, the sole purpose of having a website is to boost traffic and sales. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. If you’re yet to tap the power of SEO to your business website, be sure you’re missing a lot.
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What is SEO?
If you aren’t new to the world of online marketing, then the chances are that you’ve come across the term SEO being thrown around now and again. If you aren’t familiar with it, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a process that allows your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), making it more accessible to potential customers who are looking for products or services like yours online.
Categories of SEO
A vital thing to note is that search engines use different algorithms when ranking sites. Therefore, SEO is executed differently depending on the website’s category.
If you aren’t familiar with this field, you might find it hard to hack your way to the top of SERPs. It’s for this reason that experts at Velvet Ink Media insist that you get a specialist who knows what they’re doing. Hiring an experienced team is the surest way to ensure that your website gets the best possible optimization treatment.
There are three main categories of SEO, which include:
On-page
This is the first and most important aspect of SEO. On-page optimization means having your site’s key elements – the title, meta description, header tags, images, etc. – all correctly set up so that Google can understand what your page is about.
As they say, content is key. For on-page optimization, that means having a lot of high-quality content (more than 200 words per page). Your content should be helpful to the reader and should also happen to include keywords that you want to rank for. So, you must research your keywords and use them in the right places.
Off-page SEO
This is also as important as on-page SEO. For your site to rank position one, it needs backlinks from authority websites that are relevant to the content you have written. This can be done by giving out links in guest posts and publishing articles related to the niche of interest.
A qualified SEO agency will have a team to do this for you, says Velvet Ink Media of Tampa, FL. If not, try looking at the top websites in your niche and find out how they got their backlinks. You can also use Google Search Operators such as “link:” or “intitle:” to search for blogs that are linking back to other sites in your industry. This is an easy way of getting links from relevant high-authority websites!
Off-page SEO should be part of any link-building campaign. It has been proven to work time and time again if done correctly.
Technical SEO
This is the process of ensuring your site is technically sound and can be crawled and indexed by search engines. They’re things you can do to make sure your site is optimized, including:
- Boosting website speed– No visitor is willing to spend time on a slow-loading website. Ensure you’re using a good hosting provider and optimizing your images to keep load times down.
- Using rich snippets– Rich snippets allow you to add extra information to your search engine results pages, like star ratings or prices. This can help improve click-through rates from SERPs.
- Correcting crawl errors– Fixing broken links and 404 errors can help ensure that search engines index your website correctly.
- Optimizing for mobile devices– With more and more people using their phones and tablets to browse the web, your site must look good on all devices. Use responsive design techniques to automatically adjust your page’s layout when viewed on smaller screen size. And ensure all of your links are easy to click on with a finger.
- Easy navigations– Your visitors should be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. If they can’t, they’ll go somewhere else. So, organize your content into clear and concise categories, and make sure your navigation bar is user-friendly.
- Using a sitemap– Sitemaps can help search engine robots crawl your pages more efficiently. Creating a site map is easy, and you don’t need to hire someone to make one for you.
- Make sure all of your photos have descriptive alt text– It’s not enough to add a photo, but it needs keywords as well. Using the exact keywords throughout will strengthen your SEO efforts amongst web crawlers who read those words.
- Include internal links between related content on your website– Linking from articles or posts about similar topics helps people find what they’re looking for quickly while also boosting their relevance in search results.
Benefits of investing in SEO
Unless you just arrived from the stone age, you’ll agree that SEO is the key to a successful online marketing strategy. SEO has the potential to deliver a high return on investment (ROI).
But what are the benefits of investing in SEO? Here are some:
- Generate traffic through organic search
As of 2023, smartphone users are estimated to be around 67%. This number is only going to grow, so businesses need to have a website that can be viewed on smartphones. But simply having a website isn’t enough. If you want people out there to find your site through organic search, you need to optimize it for SEO.
When done professionally, SEO is a great way to generate traffic for your website. At its most basic, SEO can be defined as the process of improving how well search engines rank you. It’s all about mastering what makes people click on certain websites in their results list and not others (where keywords come into play).
- Promotes your brand
As mentioned earlier, SEO helps bring your site on the first pages of search engines which is excellent for promoting your site. The more your site stays at the top, the more people will be able to see it and, eventually, your brand.
This is why SEO should always be a part of your marketing strategy. It not only brings users your way but also helps in building your online presence. So if you’re looking to improve your site’s ranking, start optimizing it for the search engines.
- It’s cost-effective
As mentioned at Velvet Ink Media, the cost of marketing via SEO is significantly lower than other forms of marketing, such as Pay-Per-Click. SEO takes time to work its magic, but it’s a long-term investment that will continue to bring traffic to your website long after you’ve put in the initial effort. All that is needed is to find an SEO agency that you trust to work with the business goals outlined in your SEO strategy. Most of these agencies have discounts and different packages. So, you should shop around and find the best deal.
- It’s easier to track progress
There is nothing as draining as putting in all your effort, yet you can’t trace back where you’re going. It feels like a waste of time. However, this isn’t the case with SEO. You can track your progress and see what’s working and what isn’t. This way, you’re able to course-correct quickly and efficiently.
Many software programs allow you to do this, such as Moz Pro, Raven Tools, Ahrefs, and SEMrush. These programs have a wide variety of features, but most importantly, they all show you how your website performs in search engines. They will also show you which keywords are driving traffic to your site and which ones aren’t.
This information is precious because it allows you to hone in on the strategies that work for you and get rid of the ones that aren’t. It also gives you an idea of where your site stands against your competitors. If you know what keywords your competitor is targeting, and they are outranking you, then you know it’s time to start targeting those keywords as well.
Track your progress, figure out what’s working, and course-correct quickly- that’s the key to SEO success!
- Keeps you ahead of your competitors
In the era where new businesses keep emerging from every corner every day, SEO is the one thing that sets you different from your competitors. If you can rank well for your keywords in search engines like Google and Bing, then there is no stopping you as far as customer acquisition is concerned.
- It’s a long-term investment
According to SEO specialists at Velvet Ink Media, SEO is a long-term investment that can take up to six months to see results. And, even then, the results are never guaranteed.
SEO is not like PPC, so don’t expect to see your website at the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) overnight. Therefore, you should be patient and continue to invest in your SEO strategy even if you don’t see immediate results.
Final Thought
SEO is an integral part of digital marketing strategy and need not be complicated if you understand how it works. Taking the time to research what others are saying about this topic will help you get started on building an effective plan that can benefit your business or website for years to come.
The above list should give anyone interested in learning more about SEO something new and valuable they can use to make their search engine optimization stronger than ever before! Be sure to read up on all these points to understand them better and incorporate them into your organic searches accordingly!
Additional Reading
Tips On Optimizing Your Landing Pages For SEO
