If you’re wondering why your business doesn’t meet your marketing expectations despite all your effort to make it appealing through a well-designed website or your word of mouth strategy, then maybe it is not seen by your target audience.
Have you ever felt like this in your business?
If that is the case, it is now time to make sure it becomes visible as the days of build it and they will come are over. By using a marketing strategy that makes businesses really successful look at using Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Critical Importance of SEO
Search engine optimization or SEO can be described as a play book people should abide by so that their website (or blog) becomes optimized so that search engines find your website services or products easier in Google, which in turn improves search engine rankings for your pages and products.
In other words – It is an activity which ensures that a website becomes visible in search engines when one looks for words and phrases relevant to what the business offers. In other words, it’s simply quality control for websites.
The role of a search engine as we know is to serve and index billions of pages and serve you the most relevant content when looking for products and services, in the most efficient and fastest manner.
- SEO is not only about search engine rankings, but conducting good SEO practices can definitely improve the user experience and usability of a website.
- It’s common practice these days to shop on the web hence, your customers will look to Search Engines to find their products; it is a must that your brand name should be seen in the top positions for the keywords the user is searching in order to gain their trust.
- SEO helps promote your website, as people who find your website by searching through Google or Yahoo are more likely to promote it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or other social media channels.
- The search engine users, Google users, in particular, are likely to choose your product from one of the top 5 positions on the results page and in fact popular research shows most people up to 75% don’t click past the first page of Google, so you need to rank as high as possible to get seen by these people.
- SEO can put you ahead of the competition. When two businesses sell the same products and services, the one that is well optimized will surely get more traffic.
The main stages of the Search Engine Optimization process
On-site SEO
- Refers to the best rules to apply on your site to make it more search engine friendly. Some of the things you can do to ensure you are visible to Google update your page titles and Meta descriptions on your page so that Google knows what business you are and what you do from a service and product perspective.
- This is quite vital because did you know your business does not do what you say it does, it does what Google SES you do – strange yes. Well think about it, Google decides how to describe your business in search so you better make sure you describe to Google what you do and what services and products you offer online and offline.
- This can be done through a well-organized site structure and use data structure markup in your HTML. You can see more SEO Services and techniques which can be performed by visiting your local SEO/SEM professional and having a chat on what the best methods are for you to employ in your own business.
- Is concerned with the right way to promote your website or blog so that it ranks better in search results.
- Just like onsite SEO, offsite SEO is important to your digital footprint, it’s like a digital ecosystem you need to partake in so everything runs smoothly from a digital word of mouth perspective. You need to ensure your brand shown the consistency of service offering and offers helpful tips so customers can identify you as the expert in your field with the best product offering.
- Leveraging platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and topical BLOGs related to your industry all help show Google you’re a leading person on your topic of business, this is good for your SEO and branding. More importantly, it gives you a chance to help other people with your in-depth knowledge of your area of expertise.
Web Developer & SEO Specialist with 15+ years of experience in Open Source Web Development specialized in Joomla & WordPress development. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions".