What is SEO and why is it important for your business?

by Kathaleen C. write.coffee.sleep

If you run a business and have a website, you must have heard about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you’re not completely sure what SEO is, read the rest of the article to understand what SEO is why are businesses are using it to increase their online presence

What is SEO?

SEO is a technique used in digital marketing to help increase brand awareness which leads to more traffic to your website. A successful SEO strategy converts the traffic that you receive on your webpage to sales and revenue. SEO is an organic method of improving traffic, which is a non-paid method of marketing since you don’t use advertisements to promote your website, product, or services.

On search engine platforms such as Google, Yahoo, Explorer, Firefox, and others, any search queries entered results in hundreds, if not thousands of websites. Most search engine users don’t go beyond the first five entries in the search engine results. So you can imagine the number of people who go beyond the first search result page. Hence, the higher you rank the more chances your page has of receiving traffic. Webpages fight for the top spots in Search Engine Results Pages, if they hope to gain any traction.

Before providing an explanation on what SEO involves, you must know how search engines rank webpages on SERPs. Search engines do this using two processes: crawling and indexing. Crawling is when search engines search all webpages on the internet for a specific keyword. Several factors such as keyword density, the relevancy of the content, and others are used to rank a website. When someone enters a search query, the search engine displays the webpages that are already ranked and stored in its database. The factors that affect the indexing of a webpage are updated by search engines from time to time. But the key factors such as keyword relevancy and quality of content are always the major factors in determining the quality of a link.

So where does SEO come in?

SEO involves the use of various tools and techniques that help your webpage rank better. There are various tools available online that one can use to determine how well the SEO of a website is. In addition to this, several tools also assist in keyword research. From using H1 tags to targeting the right keywords, an effective SEO strategy ensures that your webpage ranks well for an extended period of time.

Why is it important for your business?

People use the internet to search just about everything in their life. If you are currently running a business, you must know that you can expand your customer base by reaching out to people on the internet. This is possible due to a digital marketing campaign involving SEO. SEO is important for brand awareness, traction, and for generating leads, sales and revenue. These reasons why SEO is important are given below:

· SEO is organic

Since it is organic and it doesn’t cost a penny, businesses look to SEO to improve their sales and revenue. If you use SEO techniques smartly, businesses can essentially increase their sales and revenues without spending a dollar on their digital marketing campaign. Other marketing campaigns such as Pay Per Click (PPC), Social Media Marketing (SMM), and others cost businesses. Hence, SEO can save money for an organization.

· SEO lasts for a long time

If your content is relevant, authentic, and unique, you should have no problem in making it rank among the top webpages. If SEO is done the right way, your webpage will have a good rank, even if search engines change their algorithms. However, you should note that you must regularly update your webpages, especially the content on your website from time to time.

· Effective marketing tool

Various businesses only depend on SEO for gaining traction and traffic. Without a doubt, it is an effective marketing tool for various businesses. It does not matter what type of business you have, SEO can help increase your brand reach.

Many businesses hire digital marketing firms to help them plan an effective SEO strategy. There are many affordable SEO services in New York. In addition to offering an SEO strategy, companies like Grey Media Group offers a variety of services, which include but are not limited to PPC, SMM, web designing, and other services. A digital marketing company has experience in offering a marketing solution to various clients. Their experience and knowledge of the digital marketing space are gained while working on different projects. Hence, it is a better idea to hire them.