SEO is an integral part of digital marketing. It is responsible to take your website visibility to a higher position and keep you up above all your competitors. It increases website visibility, user traffic, conversion rate, and ROI. A good ranking site is more exposed to users as compared to others it is based on logic by Google which uses the rank of the website.
SEO stands forSearch Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
53% percent of traffic to websites comes from organic search
(Source: BrightEdge Organic Channel report).
While paid advertising, social media, and other online platforms can generate traffic to websites, majority of the online traffic is driven by search engines.
SEO has ~20X more traffic opportunities than PPC on both mobile and desktop.
It involves various strategies that result in an increase in the number of visitors and hence ranking of the website. There are different methods involved in SEO strategy,
On page optimization
On page optimization is an SEO technique to increase visibility and user traffic on a website accordingly. It involves activities which make a website friendly to search engines by applying some techniques like website should have all important pages with good density of keywords and Meta keywords, etc.
Off page optimization
Off page optimization is all about link building and website promotion. It is other than the techniques involved in making changes in websites. Search ranking in a search engine is greatly affected by incoming links. A link should be built with trusted and well-known site. It is most important because article directories, paid links, etc, have negative impact on search engine.
SEO will certainly improve a website’s overall searchability and visibility, but what other real value does it offer?
Why is SEO so important?
On any given day, peopleconduct more than 2.2 million searches. And that’s just on Google — to say nothing of the other search engines.
The vast majority of online experiences begin with a search engine, and nearly75% of searchers start their searches on Google.
Combine that with the fact thatthe first five results on Google get 67% of all clicks, and you get an idea of why search engine optimization is so important.
If You’re Not on Page 1, You’re Not Winning the Click.
It’s no secret in the world of SEO that if you’re not on Page 1, you’re likely not killing the organic search game.
#1. Increased Web Traffic
Increased web traffic is one of the main goals of SEO, and you increase traffic when you increase visibility and rankings. Nearly33% of clicksgo to the first ranking page, and the first five listings get over 67% of all clicks.
If you want more prospects to find your website through a search engine, then you need SEO practices that will help you rank among the top five positions, and ideally number one.
#2. Creating a Better Visitor Experience
Another reason SEO is critical is that all the time you put into generating great content and optimizing your site with on-page SEO improves the usability of your site, and this creates a seamless and positive customer experience.
For instance, when you take steps to make your site responsive, it will make it usable for all your mobile visitors as well as people who visit from a laptop or desktop. Similarly, by increasing your page load speed, you’ll reduce your bounce rate and encourage visitors to spend longer on your site. Nearly 50% of consumersexpect a page to load within two seconds, and the longer the load time, the higher the bounce rate and the lower your conversions.
#3. SEO targets quality traffic
One of the biggest advantages of SEO is that it’s aninbound marketing strategy.
Unlike traditional “outbound” advertising channels, which involve reaching out to consumers whether they want to hear from you or not, inbound methods focus on making it easy for your audience to find you when they want information.
In fact, in HubSpot’s most recentState of Inboundreport, 59% of marketers said that inbound practices provided the highest quality leads for their sales teams.
The Crucial Elements of SEO
Website Names and URLs – Using keywords in the website names and URLs can result in good search engine ranking. They increase a website’s relevance to a particular search query.
Page Content – This basically helps in optimizing the web pages to get higher ranks in the search engine results, and thereby, increases website traffic. High-quality content also helps in generating backlinks from high-authority websites.
Meta Tags – These are important as they provide information to the visitors about your web page and an idea to the search engines about your website content.
Characteristics of Links – There are 5 types of links that are crucial for SEO – internal links, external links, natural links, self-created links, and manually obtained links. A quality link should be informative, descriptive, reliable, useful, brief, and innovative.
Usability and Accessibility – The usability of a website measures how easily a website can be used, and website accessibility refers to the availability of the website and how easily it can be accessed by normal as well as disabled people.
Page Design – It is important as it provides the users with the very first impression of your website. It also helps in website optimization and ranking higher in search engine results.
There are plenty of paid tools that you can use to do SEO analysis and inform your strategy implementation such asMoz,SEMrush,Ahrefsand more. However, there are also some free tools that you can use to aid your SEO strategy as well:
- Google Search Console– a suite of tools to monitor the number of indexed pages, security issues, and more to help you rank your pages better.
- Google Keyword Planner –to find keywords to target in your website content and rank for the keyword topics, use this tool.
The conclusion
SEO is a complex undertaking that involves many different techniques, tactics, and best practices. Moreover, these best practices are always evolving as consumer and web-user behaviors change, as new technologies emerge, and as search engines change their algorithms. SEO is still of the utmost importance for any business that wants to be visible online, so your efforts are well worth it.
The ranking factor is the key to success in digital marketing. However, it is not so easy to gather vast user traffic on a website, but SEO techniques will somehow ensure its probability. SEO is the art of increasing the visibility of a website in search engines.
SEO can help you build better relationships with your audience, improve the customer experience, increase your authority, drive more people to your site, give you an edge over the competition, and increase conversions, which means more sales, more loyal customers, and more growth for your business.
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