The Importance of SEO: How Can SEO Help My Business?

Business owners are always looking for ways to grow their businesses. Whether through advertising, social media promotions, or influencer marketing, they try unique and creative means to attract more customers and boost their sales.

However, many businesses have yet to catch on to the explosive growth and constant evolution of digital marketing, particularly SEO. Search engine optimization or SEO is a proven marketing technique that helps businesses thrive and succeed. Several studies have cited SEO as a core element in marketing, as you can quickly boost business growth and user engagement by learning and using SEO best practices.

In this article, we will be talking about what search engine optimization is and the advantages of SEO to a business. So if you’re looking for an effective way to market your brand online and grow your business, this comprehensive SEO guide can help you.

More commonly known as SEO, Search Engine Optimization is a search engine marketing strategy that involves a collection of techniques and methods designed to help improve a website’s organic traffic and visibility in search engines. You can do this by changing your website’s overall look and the type of content you publish to improve your ranking in search results. In doing so, search engines will prioritise your site in its result pages. 

SEO plays an essential role in any successful online venture. The many advantages of SEO are yours if you put in the time and effort to optimise your website and content, learn how search engines work, and consistently adjust your organic search strategy according to your business goals and needs.

SEO involves several terminologies and concepts that businesses and marketers should understand for them to maximise results. Below are the fundamental concepts involved in SEO.

1. Keywords

You can learn more about your potential customers and how they might search for your products or services through keyword research. It also reveals how people use search engines to understand more about your product.

When making a business website, you submit your site’s URLs to Google and other search engines for indexing. As such, using SEO can raise your website’s visibility in SERP (search engine results page) for targeted keywords. 

You can use these terms to spark new ideas for articles and optimise your web pages to respond to a searcher’s intent and inquiries. According to recent research, most of the title tags on the first page of Google had keywords that matched or were related to the search query. 

2. On-Page Optimization

On-page SEO pertains to acts that optimise your website and its associated content so that search engines can determine if your site is relevant to a user’s search query. 

Google constantly tweaks its algorithm to improve its ability to deduce a user’s intended meaning from a query and return relevant results. Your website needs to evolve as Google’s algorithm does.

Your website and its content, both those parts that consumers see (media, content, photos) and those parts that search engines see (metadata, HTML), must be optimised following the most up-to-date methods employed by major players like Google and Bing. As such, it will help search engines index and appropriately rank your site.

3. Off-Page Optimization

Unlike on-page SEO, off-page means focusing on factors outside your website. This includes social media signals, links from other websites, citations, online business profiles, social bookmarks, and public reviews among others. Off-page SEO contributes to increasing your site’s authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines and their users. 

To boost your website’s ranking through off-page SEO, you can engage in promotional activities such as link building, social media marketing, guest blogging, and influencer marketing.

Off-page SEO relies heavily on link building because backlinks are a quality signal for Google. A study by the marketing agency Reboot even showed a causal link between the quantity of a page’s external links and its positive impact on search engine rankings.

In general, search rankings favour a website with several high-quality backlinks over those with fewer, lower-quality ones. It’s important to remember that you should always avoid Black hat link-building strategies at all costs in favour of natural link growth.

4. User Experience

Using SEO, you can improve your website’s usability by tweaking its structure, content, and navigation. Google gives importance to websites that are easy to navigate. Additionally, Google favours accessible websites when determining rankings, and the search engine even provides its own Webmaster Guidelines outlining its preferred methods. 

Google has bots that crawl the web and monitor your websites. During this procedure, the search engine giant looks for indications that your site offers a positive user experience in utility, accuracy, and safety.

In addition to improving the user experience for persons with disabilities, making your website accessible benefits everyone who visits your site. As a result, your site’s bounce rate may decrease while user engagement and conversions increase.

5. Content

Content plays a big and crucial role in optimising a website. Search engines favour websites with fresh, quality, and relevant human-generated content. To ensure that your website gets picked up by Google and your audience stays interested, you must consistently provide high-quality content.

A quality SEO content typically consists of the following key elements:

• Eye-catching and descriptive title
• Meaty and informative body of content
• A good strike of balance between target keywords and natural conversational phrases
• A few internal and external links, especially when referring to relevant sources
• Useful infographics, tables, graphs, images, and/or videos, whenever necessary
• Answers to common questions of readers and solutions to pain points

When it comes to length, there is no exact rule as to how long your content on each page should be. Both short and long-form content pieces have equal opportunity to be noticed, indexed, and ranked by Google as long as they contain relevant and useful information that human users need.

After learning what SEO is and what the fundamental concepts behind it are, the next question to ask is: is SEO important?

When looking for something online, people often use search engines such as Google and click on the first site they see in organic search—whether it is a product they want to buy, a movie they want to see, a job opening, a company’s profile, sales promotions, or the contact information of a long lost friend. Google has become the go-to tool of billions of people worldwide to get the information they want or need.

Search engines are programmed to sift through various bits of data on websites and return a ranked list of relevant results. Google ranks search results according to how relevant each website is to the user’s original query. This is where the importance of SEO comes in.

If you want your website to be on top of the list, you should always include SEO in your business’s digital marketing campaign. One of the many SEO benefits is that it helps increase your website’s online presence and brings in more targeted visitors. The most valuable website traffic is organic traffic because it costs nothing to attract new visitors. Moreover, 75% of all clicks come from the top page of search pages. Websites with higher search rankings for a given query are more likely to be visited. 

If you still need convincing on SEO, several studies have shown that users put a lot of faith in search engines, with the websites on the first page gaining the most traffic. The greater your position in search results pages, the more visitors your site will receive. SEO also enhances the user experience, which increases the likelihood of a consumer making a repeat purchase.

It’s hard to imagine how people could regularly locate the websites, businesses, or information they need if SEO didn’t exist. It would be too easy for unreliable websites to boost their rankings in search results, making it more difficult for visitors to locate relevant results.

Did you know that a whopping 93% of web activities start on a search engine? This means that when people go online, the first place they go to is Google or Bing to search for something they want or need at the moment. Despite this, many people unfamiliar with marketing or just starting their websites and businesses still ask, “Why is SEO important to a business?” 

So many businesses are using SEO because it can help you boost sales, expand your customer base, and establish your company as an industry leader. Here are a few SEO advantages to help your business grow.

1. SEO builds credibility.

SEO helps a company build credibility naturally, as websites that appear in higher rankings are perceived as credible and trustworthy. When a site is credible, it attracts high-quality organic links, gets highlighted in the news, and converts visitors from the target demographic.

Positive client experiences translate into more clicks on your website, leading to more visits and organic traffic. Over time and without extra effort, this will increase your visibility in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

If you give the people what they want, they will grow to rely on you as a reliable business. End-users have clear preferences. SEO performance will suffer if you fail to match user expectations. 

Trust is built with users when the platform consistently delivers the goods through information and answers to queries, products, and services they seek. 

2. SEO expands your market reach.

One of the many SEO benefits of a reasonable strategy is that it can help you expand your reach. SEO can help you attract anyone anytime, regardless of where they are in the purchasing funnel. In contrast, most marketing strategies focus on a specific target group. 

You can even attract more potential customers to your business if you focus on keywords rather than your pay-per-click (PPC) and social media advertising campaigns. Note the search terms for which you want to be optimised. Then, you can use keyword tools to make it even more extensive. 

It’s also essential to conduct proper research to hone your list by learning more about who your competitors are, the keywords they are ranking for, and the sites to which they have backlinks.

3. SEO helps boost brand awareness.

How can you get people to remember your brand when there are already 1.88 billion websites? One of the most remarkable ways to do this is through an SEO plan.

You must be on Google’s top page to be seen and respected online. Your engagement and credibility will increase with the number of clicks you receive after you’ve optimised your content for search queries. 

Boosting your brand’s visibility can result from a domino effect ignited by your SEO approach. Having people recognise your brand is only the beginning; it’s equally important that they understand what your brand stands for and the value it adds to the marketplace. 

Content marketing aims to provide users with relevant, high-quality content they can rely on. They have confidence in approaching you with inquiries, increasing the likelihood of a sale.

4. SEO can be an excellent form of brand promotion.

Regarding SEO, the office clock is irrelevant, and results don’t stop just because you stop working. Unlike paid advertisements, natural, authentic, and optimised content will remain there, even if you cut your marketing budget in half. 

Thus, your business may serve its clients’ demands around the clock and continue to reap the benefits of SEO. Using SEO to promote your business will help you rank higher for organic keywords and bring in more targeted traffic. It will provide your business with the exposure and promotion it needs.

5. SEO shows quantifiable results.

What’s great about using SEO is that you can easily see quantifiable results in real-time, from changes in search engine rankings, conversion rates, and visitor numbers. Using a tool like Google Analytics, you can get all the data and then narrow it down to the finest details. 

A user’s paths to purchase can even be tracked in detail, down to the sites they visited and the actions they took within the site. These findings can be used to fine-tune and enhance your SEO strategy.

6. SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy.

SEO is one of the least expensive ways to expand your brand’s internet visibility as an inbound marketing strategy (unlike cold calling or sending unsolicited emails or adverts). 

When used effectively, SEO puts your website in front of individuals actively looking for the product or service you offer based on the phrases they use to find your article or listing. Therefore, these prospects are in a highly committed state.

It’s essential to note that compared to paid internet ads, well-managed SEO can keep bringing in quality visitors long after the campaign ends.

7. SEO provides long-term results.

SEO is an ongoing marketing strategy in which you will continuously see results after you end or stop using SEO strategies. However, to better optimise SEO and its uses, you instead treat it as a long-term investment. 

It’s better to invest in your SEO strategy for the long run to maintain your results in an ever-changing market and search algorithms.

SEO is a proven effective digital marketing technique you can use if you want to take your business online, reach a wider set of audience, attract more customers, and convert leads into paying customers. To start your SEO efforts, here are a few basic steps you need to know.

1. Know the basics.

The first step in familiarising yourself with SEO is mastering the basics. You can learn about SEO and digital marketing from various sources, including blogs, online videos, and digital courses. By taking advantage of these free digital marketing resources, you can get yourself up to speed with the concepts of SEO and customised strategies that will benefit your business.

2. Perform competitive analysis.

Who are your top competitors in the business and in the industry? How are their websites ranking on Google? Take some time to observe how they optimise their sites, what keywords are they targeting, what kinds of content they publish, and how often they update their website. This information gives you ideas as to why Google may be favouring these competitors on search results.

3. Do keyword research.

Identify the keywords or keyphrases you’d like your website to rank for. Use keyword research tools such as Ahrefs, Moz, and Google Ads Keyword Planner to get insights about highly searched keywords and how competitive or challenging they can be.

4. Start doing your on-page SEO.

After determining the best keywords to target and use on your website, start incorporating them in essential places of your website, such as the SEO tags, headers, content, and links.

5. Write and publish relevant content.

Create high-quality, informative, and engaging content about your brand and business. This can be in the form of blogs or additional pages on your site, such as FAQs or Guides.

6. Perform off-page SEO.

Build a strong online presence by obtaining backlinks from authoritative websites, engaging in social media marketing, submitting your site to online directories, and participating in industry-related forums and discussions.

7. Measure and track rankings.

Utilise SEO tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor your website’s performance in search rankings. Track keyword rankings, organic traffic, and user engagement to gauge the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.

It’s essential to keep in mind that SEO is a long-term strategy. If you’re a beginner, don’t expect to see immediate results, but if you keep on developing your SEO strategy, then before you know it, you’ll see your website at the top of the organic search results.

SEO benefits can never be overstated. In today’s digital age, people depend heavily on search engines to look for the information, products, and content they need. Businesses should, therefore, leverage SEO, among other web tools and digital marketing efforts, to capture the attention of a global audience.

If you are running an online business but haven’t started taking advantage of the many features and powerful benefits of SEO, let our SEO experts in Wozuma help you get started. We are a top-rated SEO agency in Littlehampton that helps businesses boost their online presence and rank higher on Google search results through winning SEO strategies and campaigns. Contact us now and let’s start optimising your website so you can personally experience the benefits and promising results of SEO for your business.