You are probably still trying to ‘find your feet’ if you are relatively new to the world of online marketing. You might have started creating a presence for your business on social media, or investing in PPC advertising to boost website hits. However, you need to be aware that if you do not dedicate enough time and money to perfect your website’s SEO, all of your other digital marketing efforts are almost certain to be in vain.
So, what is SEO, exactly? And why is it such a vital aspect of any digital marketing strategy? Furthermore, how can you master it? Below are all of the facts that you need to know.
What is SEO?
SEO revolves around optimizing your website in line with best practice guidelines as outlined by Google and other search engines. By adhering to these recommendations, Google will rank your website higher when potential customers type keywords or keyphrases relevant to your service offering. The higher towards the top you rank, the better the chances of potential customers clicking through to your website before clicking through to your competitors.
In order to understand the true meaning of SEO, you need to look at its three main components – the quality of the traffic, how much of it you are getting, and organic results. Ultimately, the goal of SEO should not be to attract hordes of people to your website. It should be to attract the right people to your website. Those people should be individuals who are actually interested in buying what you are selling. When you have the right people making their way to your website, only then can you focus on boosting the numbers.
SEO is all about generating organic results – in other words, organic traffic for which you do not pay anything extra. Having said that, paid traffic / PPC is a great way to support your SEO efforts.
What is included in SEO?
There are various aspects to consider when putting an SEO strategy together. You will need to ensure that you cover both on-page and off-page SEO factors. On-page SEO factors include metadata, engaging content, proper inter-linking, and easy navigation across the site map. Off-page SEO factors include links from trustworthy websites back to your own website, as well as reviews and social media.
Other great tips to remember to maximise your SEO efforts include ensuring optimal crawl accessibility so that the search engines can effortlessly scan through and ‘understand’ your website. You should also focus your attention on crafting compelling content that strives to provide in-depth answers to the questions that searchers are typing into Google. Doing this also boosts your chances of your content appearing in a Google snippet!
Marketers need to spend time researching keywords that will attract both searchers and search engines, all the while dedicating time to enhancing user experience through faster loading speeds, easy navigation, etc.
Finally, be sure to include relevant keywords in all meta titles, URLs, and meta descriptions to draw in a higher CTR when it comes to your rankings.
Here at WSI OMS, we specialise in everything from SEO to social media marketing. Get in touch today for the full scope of our service offering.