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Why is SEO important?
There are almost as many websites as there are people on this planet. Getting noticed on this wide, wide web is a lot harder than it once was in the early days of the Internet. As a small business owner, you might not have the funds to push out a ton of paid ads to get your business noticed. But with the right search engine optimization strategy, you can generate organic (aka free!) traffic to your site so you can build your customer base and make more money.
Why is it important to build organic traffic? Here are some powerful stats from Intergrowth that show just how important SEO is for your business:
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68% of online experiences begin with a search engine
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63% of all shopping begins online, even if the purchase itself happens in a store
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75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines
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66% of people perform some type of online research before making a purchase online
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86% of people ignore paid banner ads, choosing to only click on organic search result
What SEO is:
A long-term strategy
There’s no such thing as a quick-win overnight SEO strategy. (If you’re being advertised for that, run in the opposite direction!) Building domain authority and getting on page one of search results is a long-term strategy, not a short-term tactic. But that doesn’t mean the effort isn’t worth it. With the right SEO strategy, you can start seeing results in as little as a few months for your business.
High-quality content
Why do you search for something on Google? Because you want to find an answer to your question. If a site doesn’t seem trustworthy or lacks all the information you’re looking for, you’re going to navigate away and find another source. Don’t be that low-quality, 100-word blog. Figure out what your customers are asking and write well-researched content that accurately and comprehensively answers their questions.
What SEO isn't:
Writing for Google
Yes, you’re hoping to rank on page 1 of Google search results. But you’re not writing content for a search bot. You’re trying to sell a product or service to a human being. So focus on putting out content that meets their needs, answers their questions, and provides value. When you write with your ideal customer in mind, Google rewards you for it.
Keyword stuffing
Gone are the days when you can just insert a keyword into your content a few times and call it a day. Google’s algorithms have gotten a lot smarter in recent years. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use keywords, but use them to guide the content creation process as opposed to stuffing them randomly into your content.
On-page SEO
This is all about optimizing your website to create a high-quality experience for your customers (and for Google!). It’s called “on page” because these are changes that visitors can physically see on your website, as opposed to off-page or backend technical SEO elements which aren’t visible.
Tactics include:
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Keyword research
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Formatting
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Title and heading tags
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Meta descriptions
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URL length
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Internal and external links
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User experience (both desktop and mobile)
I offer on-page SEO consultation services if this is an area you're hoping to build out on your site!
Google wants to know: can you and your content be trusted? It doesn’t want to send searchers to the wrong website. So off-page SEO is all the tactics you do off your website that build trust and authority for your site to help improve your rankings.
Tactics include:
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Link building (like backlinks, or links back to your website)
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Social sharing
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EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
Off-page seo
technical seo
This involves all the back-end site development that helps search engines crawl your site and understand what it’s all about.
Tactics include:
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Site architecture
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Mobile optimization
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Robots.txt
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Canonicalization
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Protocols
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Redirect codes
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Site speed