What is SEO and Why is it Important for Your Business?

If you have a website, it goes without reason that you need SEO. So, while it definitely does deliver good visibility and searchability to your website, SEO is not limited to just that. So, what else does it do and why is it so important? But first...

What is SEO?

“SEO is the process of building and analysing a website with fundamental codes and existing pages so that they can be searched and indexed by search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, etc.”

In simple terms, SEO is basically a way of linking or connecting seekers to products or services they are searching for. If you can make your titles, keywords, and backlinks pertinent to a client's inquiry, you will get higher ranks in Google's search engine and your prospects will easily discover you when they are searching for a specific item or service that is identified with your business.

Why is SEO important?

Check out our blog published by HubSpot user blog - Keeping Your Content Relevant Using Hubspot - Even During Google Algorithm Changes

SEO brings organic traffic and rankings towards a website or an online store. Constant Google algorithm changes (as you must have read in the link above) make it all the more challenging for businesses to keep their page authority dominant. In such a scenario, SEO takes precedence over any other tactic for better site rankings.

It takes a minimum of 6 to 8 months for it to show desired results if your website content is aligned with your services and keywords, and most importantly if it is user-friendly. Until then, your website will not even show up in Google search results. Brands use blogs and articles to advertise themselves on search engines to gain a higher page authority, in order to attract more traffic to their sites. By using SEO, they have a greater likelihood of increasing their sales as well. When a business’s services are on one of the first pages of Google, it tends to get better traffic to their site which ultimately amplifies their sales.

What are the Main Types of SEO?

SEO is not a static procedure and mainly falls into 3 main stages:

•       Technical Search Engine Optimization
•       On-Page Search Engine Optimization
•       Off-Page Search Engine Optimization

Technical SEO

The primary and main stage in the SEO procedure is called technical SEO. As the name infers, specialised SEO has nothing to do with the real substance or content of a site or with site advancement techniques.

It is to do with your settings, to make the activity of web search engine crawlers easier. The most important thing here is, when you get your technical search engine optimization smooth, you might not need to manage it again and again.

On the other hand, if you identify any issues with indexing or crawling, it can contradictorily affect your rankings, ultimately taking them down.

On-page SEO

The secondary stage is On-page search engine optimization. This requires you to put keywords on your website that you would like to get ranked for. In order to find these keywords, you must do some research using tools like Google's free keyword tool. Once you find the relevant keywords, you must incorporate them in your website content and meta tags.

To help you understand this, these are the main elements that constitute the process:

• Heading tags, H1 - as the main title and H2 as the sub-heading, both containing relevant keywords
• Unique title of the page specifying or describing the page content
• Meta description, a snippet of about 155 characters summarising a page’s content
• Image Optimization (Alt tags) as text alternatives for search engines
• URL structure as the individual address of the website on the internet
• User-friendly navigation and quick loading
• Unique and quality content, related to the target audience

Off-page SEO

And finally, Off-page SEO simply means getting backlinks to any website using keyword anchor text.

Let us explain...

Off-page depends on another web page to increase your website or your blog. It deals with link building factors, which is an ongoing process and requires regular new links with high domain and page authority. Meaning, if you obtain a high-quality link, then your site can rank higher. Strategic off-page work increases website traffic and search engine position.

These are some of the SEO Off-page activities that can boost your ranking in search engines:

• Social Bookmarking: Adding bookmarks to your site makes it easier for readers to save your content and share it with others, thereby, boosting your site’s SEO.

• Press Release: By giving a creative headline and adding relevant keywords, the press release could be more than just sharing newsworthy substance. A press release can help you score a high number of backlinks from other webmasters as well.

• Infographic Submission: With much visual appeal, infographics help in retaining users’ attention span and when used with other web elements, boosts the rankings of your site.

• WEB 2.0 creation and Sharing: Web 2.0 is a publisher type webpage that helps one create their own website with the help of web applications, video sharing sites, etc. Social Bookmarking websites, Social Media Platforms, and Video creation and Sharing are a few such models.

• Blog creation and sharing: Blogging helps support SEO quality by situating your site as a pertinent solution to your clients' inquiries. Blog entries that explicitly utilise an assortment of on-page SEO strategies can give you more chances to rank high in web crawlers.

• Article Submission and Sharing: As one of the most successful tactics, when added to the well-known article accommodation indexes, it helps in promoting and showcasing your business on the web or internet.

• Video Submission and Sharing: As one of the easiest ways to attract traffic, it is a solid link building referencing process. MP4 record design is the most widely recognized video document that is utilized for accommodation as link building referencing, advancing your business with visual intrigue.

• Quora Post: Apart from establishing one as a credible source of knowledge, posting on Quora enables one to share content from different sites and claim site to address the inquiries, thereby boosting the site's SEO.

• Reddit Post: Reddit composes content under different "subreddits" in view of various points. Reddit’s feature of anyone posting, sharing, commenting, and voting on a particular point in each subreddit leads to quicker SEO development.

• Business Listing: An online section that contains your business name, address, and telephone number (NAP) and can help your site get indexed quickly for instant traffic. Some such sites are Yelp, Foursquare, and Yellow Pages.

• PPT/PDF Sharing: One can make a PDF/PPT for their site and advertise it. These areas are regularly updated and therefore, web indexes crawl all websites more frequently. Even the return link can help attract more traffic.

• Forum Profile Creation: The best way for business underwriting on the web, and a link building referencing technique where profiles are made on various stages, for example, Forum profile and comments adding sites, social media and networking, web 2.0 sites, and so on.

• Classified Submission: As an off-page SEO strategy, classifieds are utilised for online advertisement of brands, items, and administrations, and help in producing natural traffic.

• Profile Creation: A very helpful technique in increasing more focused traffic. If one creates a profile on a high domain authority website, then it aids in improving organic views.

• Image Sharing: Image sharing sites help create backlinks and traffic, automatically boosting the site’s traffic.

SEO Goes Hand in Hand With Good Quality Content

Sure, you got your off-page, on-page, and technical SEO right. But what about content? Does it affect your rankings? As a matter of fact, it does! It is only if the content is readable that Google will read it too or will simply skip it and go to the next best quality content that matches better with the user queries. This is also where Organic SEO comes into the picture. Organic SEO works best to get a permanently good and sustained ranking if you are looking to expand further.

The most important thing to remember here is that your content needs to be well incorporated with the targeted keywords no matter what you are writing. As the primary source of website traffic, content offers you the cherry you need on top of SEO and the longer the content, the better it is for improved site ranking. Target at least 1500-2000 words in your articles and blogs, incorporate all relevant and long-tail keywords for best results.

Local SEO - Better Traffic and Engagement

Having said that, local search is a fundamental part of any mobile searches today - predominantly mobile with embedded GPS as it targets a specific vicinity for the products and services users might be looking for. When focused on providing a better ranking on a local level - towns, cities, regions, states, etc - there’s a much higher chance of engagement and traffic than without. Since customers have full control over what they are searching for, thanks to the internet, local SEO greatly impacts the buying cycle if it is done right.

So, make use of local listings as per a specific area or location, optimise knowledge graph panel, and update the social media handles accordingly.

To Sum Up

While looking for any best SEO package, always make sure that you make time to time changes in your website like updating in code structures, keywords, content, and other technical bits. Consistent updates that work parallel with the algorithm changes of search engines will bring success to any business. " SEO training "

Long story short - If you are not on page 1 of Google results, you are not winning it! And that’s where we can help you - Get in touch today and get a head start on boosting your rankings!

While you are here, get your definitive guide on SEO, in the world of AI and Chatbots here. And here are some basic SEO mistakes you can avoid this year!