Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short, is a strategy to improve your website ranking in organic (unpaid) search engine results. It involves finding out which phrases – or keywords – your target audience uses when looking for your product or service and optimising your website for those keywords.
This is the simplest possible version of what SEO is today. Let’s look at the reasons you need SEO and why it is a key part of any online strategy.
SEO INCREASES YOUR VISIBILITY AND RANKING
The key function of SEO is increasing your website’s visibility. This means making it easier for people to find you when they search for a product or service that you have. The higher your website’s ranking for your keywords, the more visibility your website has.
The more quality investment you put into your SEO, the higher your ranking and visibility will be. Not sure where to begin? Look at our Top 5 Tips to Get Your SEO Journey Started.
SEO BOOSTS YOUR CREDIBILITY
A site that ranks high on a search engine results page is typically considered high quality and trustworthy. Putting in the work to improve your website’s domain authority increases the credibility of your business. Domain authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz. It predicts how likely a website is to rank on a search engine results page.
Spending time improving, adding content, increasing your website speed and researching keywords all help you rank your website higher and create content your users want to see. By boosting your business’s credibility, you can drive more traffic to your website.
USER EXPERIENCE IS VITAL FOR SEO
Working on user experience for your website is essential. Google takes user experience into account for rankings. We discussed previously how important rankings are: a better ranking means you show closer to the top of searches related to your product or service
It is vital that you take the time to improve the user experience on your website. For example, when you take steps to make your website responsive, users can use your website no matter what device they are on! This also reduces your bounce rate, which encourages visitors to spend more time on your website. Another important factor is load time, or how fast a page loads for users. Today, consumers expect a page to load in less than 3 seconds, so it is vital to make sure your pages are up to speed. A better user experience leads to more sales and stronger SEO.
SEO HELPS YOU OVERTAKE YOUR COMPETITORS
You might be wondering, “How can I overtake my competitors with SEO?” The answer is, that the more you optimise your website, the higher you rank on a search results page. By providing your users with more useful content on your website and becoming the go-to thought leader in your industry, your website becomes more attractive than your competitors.
This helps you climb the rankings ladder and overtake your competitors on the search results page. This should also help you increase your conversion rate, as you are providing exactly what a user needs for the product or service you are selling.
SEO GOES WELL WITH YOUR PPC CAMPAIGNS
Our last reason might be surprising to you at first glance: SEO goes hand in hand with your PPC campaigns! Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC for short, helps put your ads at the very top of the results page for your keywords.
PPC is a paid marketing strategy which involves advertisers paying a fee every time one of their ads is clicked. PPC is the best way to figure out which keywords work best for your brand, as it involves doing keyword research for your ads and testing those to figure out which works best. It is the fastest way to collect that keyword data.
Since SEO and PPC are both keyword-driven strategies, they go hand in hand. All the information you gather on keywords during your work for PPC helps you focus on the right keywords for your SEO efforts.
CONCLUSION
SEO is without a doubt a very important part of your online strategy, and every online business should invest in it. It is a key factor in generating more traffic and making your website successful.
It is also important to know that SEO is a long-term investment. SEO requires time and dedication for it to be successful, but in the long run, it will be the difference between you and your competitors.
