If you want to attract a lot of organic traffic to your business website, you need SEO marketing.
But you already know that. You don’t know what SEO is or how you’re supposed to use it. That’s okay. We’ve created this detailed guide to break it down for you.
Keep reading to learn more about SEO and why your business needs it.
What Is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a way to increase the quality and the quantity of your website traffic with organic search results. At the same time, this will also provide more exposure to your brand.
Most people will tell you SEO is about search engine optimization Kingsville, but it actually has a lot to do with people. Not only do you have to understand the kind of things your audience is searching for, you also have to know what words they’re using, and what content format they want. Once you know these things, you can create optimized content designed for and cater to your target audience.
And it all starts with asking these kinds of questions: what, who, when, how, why, where.
For example, let’s say you have a business that sells electronic blankets. These are some of the questions you might ask to help you get familiar with your target audience.
- What types of electronic blankets are people searching for?
- Who is looking for these blankets?
- When do people search for these blankets (are the searches seasonal)?
- How are people searching for these blankets (what words are they using, what devices do they prefer, and what questions do they ask)?
- Why are people looking for electronic blankets?
- Where are these people located (are they local visitors, national visitors, or international visitors)?
Once you know the answers to these questions, you can focus on providing high-quality content about electronic blankets and fulfilling the needs of your target audience.
Why Is SEO Important?
You can pay for advertising or set up social media accounts for your business, but most of the traffic online comes through search engines. If your website isn’t search engine optimized, you’re cutting yourself off from a platform of potential traffic.
Organic search results make your website more credible, and they get a lot more clicks than advertisements. The number of people who click on ads is minuscule compared to the number of online searchers out there.
On top of that, in order to keep your ads up, you have to keep paying for them. That’s not the case with SEO.
If you’re SEO is set up properly, it can continue giving your website traffic over long periods of time. This means your traffic will keep growing the longer you have content on your website.
Optimizing your website gives search engines better information about your content so they can properly display your content in the search results.
Getting Familiar With the Search Engine Basics
Organic Search results
Organic search results are results you don’t pay for.
For example, if someone finds your website by clicking on a paid advertisement, they did not find your website through organic search results. These are the types of results you can impact with SEO.
SERP Features
SERP stands for search engine results pages, and they now have many different SERP features, also known as dynamic organic results formats.
Some of these features include Also Ask boxes, image carousels, and featured snippets.
For example, when you look up what day Christmas lands on this year, you would see the date as part of the SERP. If you wanted to look for good restaurants in your area, you might find what’s called a “local pack” of restaurant suggestions in the SERP as well.
The Three Different Types of SEO
There are a few different SEO methods you should be aware of when you enter the world of optimization. SEO gives you a long-term strategy to build traffic for your website.
But not every SEO strategy does that.
Here are the three different types of SEO and what you need to know about them.
White Hat SEO
White hat SEO is the type of SEO you want. It involves the best SEO techniques and practices that work with the search engine rules. This SEO focuses on delivering helpful and quality content to the people who’re looking for it.
Black Hat SEO
People who use black hat SEO techniques are trying to spam search engines. This type of SEO optimizes content for the search engines without considering the people searching for it at all.
Black hat SEO can work, but if you use this strategy, you’re at a high risk of being penalized or removed from the search results altogether.
Most people don’t consider black hat SEO ethical, so you’ll want to stay away from it.
Grey Hat SEO
As you might guess, this is a mix of white hat SEO and black hat SEO. But just because you’re using white hat SEO doesn’t make up for your use of black hat SEO.
You should either stick to white hat SEO strategies or not use any SEO at all. Anything else can have a negative impact on your business.
What You Need to Know to Start a SEO Plan
The first step of optimizing your website is making sure you’re familiar with your business goals. Having a clear understanding of your website allows you to better choose the areas of SEO to focus on, shows you where to track conversions, and tells you how to set benchmarks.
Set up some key performance indicators (KPIs) so you can measure the return on your SEO investment.
These vary from website to websites, but they might include:
- Phone calls / Leads
- Email Signups
- Contact Form Submissions
- Downloads
- E-commerce Sales
- Etc.
You should also consider hiring an SEO professional.
You can learn basic SEO yourself, but you have to have plenty of time set aside and be willing to learn it. And SEO can be more complicated than it sounds.
Undertaking all of this on a busy business schedule can be overwhelming. If you want the best results, hiring an SEO professional is the way you should go.
Are you looking for trustworthy SEO services? Make sure you head over to our services page and take a look at how we can help you with best Sarnia seo expert.
