You’ve probably heard plenty of times that SEO is important for your business, which is true. SEO is a valuable tool for any business that wants to be visible online and is becoming increasingly crucial in a world that relies heavily on digital processes and transactions. SEO involves many different techniques, tactics, and best practices that are continually evolving as new technologies emerge, user behaviors shift, and search engine algorithms change. If you haven’t already added SEO to your marketing efforts, then now is the time to consider doing so.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a combination of several components and marketing tactics that work together to increase the quality and quantity of your website traffic.
- Keywords Keywords are the words and phrases used when a potential customer is searching online. Today’s searchers are entering keywords into search engines with the goal of solving a problem, to accomplish a task, or to “do” something. Your keywords need to be well-researched, carefully chosen, and used in the content on your website in order to be effective.
- Content Content is how you reach and engage with your audience and can be in a variety of forms, including blogs, web page content, videos, infographics, podcasts, white papers, local listings, and social media posts. Your content should be well organized, load quickly, be mobile-friendly, have title tags and meta descriptions on all pages, and images should have alternative text for the benefit of the visually impaired. Your content should provide value to the intended audience and include appropriate internal linking.
- Backlink SEO Backlink or Off-Page SEO is the behind the scenes external optimization practices that increase your site’s validity and trustworthiness. The main technique used for this is backlink building. Backlinks are links to your website from another website. Quality backlinks to your site from external sites tell search engines that your site is valuable and high-quality, and this builds authority. Performing an audit of the backlinks to your site and removing the ones that aren’t of good quality can help improve your ranking.
- Core Web Vitals Core Web Vitals are factors that are important in a webpage’s overall user experience. The page experience for each page on your website is scored by Google based on these factors. The Core Web Vitals are loading time, interactivity, and visual stability. The loading time is how long it takes a page to load from the point of view of an actual user. Interactivity is how well the user is able to actually interact with your page, such as choosing an option from a menu, clicking on a link, or entering their email into a field. Visual stability is how a page looks as it loads. Having elements on the page that move around as the page loads is not ideal. SEO can determine if your page experience score is low, and will identify the problems, make recommendations, and work to reconcile them.
- Local SEO Making sure your business is able to be found in directory listings and maps is more important than ever. This is especially important if you are trying to get someone to visit your store or restaurant in person, or have location limitations regarding membership eligibility. This is done by creating location-specific landing pages on your website, using local keywords, and creating pages and keeping them up-to-date for your business on Google My Business and Google Maps.
Why is SEO Important?
SEO is significant because it makes your website more visible and helps you outrank competitors. When your website is more visible it will have more traffic, and increased traffic on your site means more opportunities to convert prospects into customers or members.
- Visibility and Rankings SEO makes it easier for prospective customers to find you when they are searching for a product or service that you offer. Your website’s visibility is related to your ranking. The higher you rank on a search engine result page, the more likely prospective customers are to see your business listed and click through to your site. The more effective your SEO efforts are, the higher your ranking will be, resulting in better visibility.
- Web Traffic Getting more people to your website is one of the main goals of SEO. Increased visibility and rankings lead to an increase in web traffic.
- Authority This means that your website is trustworthy, relevant, high quality, and has something to offer. Your ranking improves the more authority your website has, which leads to increases in visibility and traffic. Optimizing on-page elements and content, in addition to positive user behavior, also factors into your website’s authority.
- Better User Experience It is imperative that your website is highly functional and offers a seamless and positive user experience. Websites must be mobile-friendly and have quick page load speeds. If your site is not mobile-friendly you could be missing out on the majority of your potential customers or members. Also, if your pages take to long to load, users will leave the website before ever seeing any of your content, leading to a high bounce rate and fewer conversions.
SEO can help your business attain a variety of goals, including increasing brand awareness, website traffic, conversions, customer experience, and more. It is also the best way to understand your customer and what they want and need based on search query data, search engine ranking page analysis, and analytics data and insights. SEO is a useful tool for analyzing the sources of your website’s traffic, determining which pages and content are performing best and which are underperforming, optimizing content and keywords, as well identifying changes to your ranking over time. SEO is an increasingly important tool in getting the right people to your website.
PMD Group is here to help you achieve your goals. We can provide SEO services and recommendations that are specifically designed for your business. If you would like to discuss adding SEO to your 2022 budget, contact our SEO team today.