SEO may be a form of marketing that you have heard of but may not precisely know what it is or why it is essential. In this article, we have summarized what SEO is, why you should care, and some primary resources to start making some progress in your own SEO.
What is SEO
SEO can be elusive, but the core principles are relatively straight forward. There are two main things to consider, your On-page factors are those that appear on your website, and then the result of off page activity. The core of this is your website’s content, which may include your home page, service pages, product pages, and blogs. This content can then be optimized for keywords, which will help influence how well it ranks in Google. By adding keywords into the title, headings and main body of a page Google can then understand what the page is about. The more specific to the user your content is, the better chance that it will rank well.
Off-page factors are then how Google knows to trust your website. This is done through links, and Google interprets links as a ‘vote’ for your site. Substantial authority websites will have thousands or even millions of other websites referring to them in their content. For example, the Wikipedia page for the state of Texas is linked to by many sites. Google then knows that many people see this page as useful and ranks it at the top of the page for this search.
- People trust Google
People seeing you at the top of the SERP makes people feel like you are a brand worth checking out, and more often than not people trust that the top result in Google is the best option.
- No advertising costs
If you take a full-page advert in a magazine, the upfront cost can be very high, with no guarantee that the user will get in touch. In addition, the advert only appears as long as you are paying for it.
You cannot pay to get to the top of Google, although you can spend marketing dollars on an agency like KnP Net Media to help with your on-page and off-page strategy. If you have the best SEO strategy, you will appear at the top of Google, and will never have to pay to get there.
- Continuous traffic and sales
As mentioned in the last point, once you are at the top of Google, as long as your SEO strategy remains in line with Google’s suggestions, you will have continuous website traffic and sales. This is the key benefit of SEO, and when combined with the trust that Google gives your website and that there are no additional advertising costs is a very attractive marketing option.
We hope that this has been an excellent introduction to how SEO can be significant in your marketing strategy. If you want to find out more, we recommend the whiteboard Fridays on SEO Moz.