What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Everything You Need To Know

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” This simply means the process of improving your site to increase it’s visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Google, Bing, and other search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to gain attention and attract prospective customers to your business.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as “natural” or “organic” results) rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. 

As an internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine behavior, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. SEO is performed because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when websites rank higher on the search engines results pages (SERP). These visitors can then potentially be converted into customers..

The key difference between SEO and paid advertising is that SEO involves “organic” ranking, which means you don’t pay to be in that space. To make it a bit simpler, search engine optimization means taking a piece of online content and optimizing it so search engines like Google show it towards the top of the page when someone searches for something.

Look at it this way. When someone types “vegan lasagna” into Google, they’re likely looking for a recipe, ingredients, and instructions on how to make it. If you wrote an article about making vegan lasagna, you’d want people to find your recipe. For anyone to find it, you need to rank above all the other websites with recipes for vegan lasagna. It’s not easy, but that’s what SEO marketing is all about.

Let’s break it down even further: The majority of online searches begin with a search engine like Google. In fact, 75 percent of those searches start on Google.

To better understand how you can rank your content higher in the search engines, you need to first understand how search works.

The ultimate goal of this article is to help you understand the in and out of search so you can optimize your content to rank higher on Google and get more eyeballs on your posts.

What are the Benefits of SEO

Should I invest in search engine optimization (SEO)? Does SEO offer real value? Is SEO really an important factor in business growth? 

We will explore few significant benefits of search engine optimization for businesses intent on increasing visibility and providing value to their target audience.

1. SEO Increases Organic and High-Quality Website Traffic

Organic visibility, leading to increased website traffic, is a monumental benefit of SEO. Search engine optimization is hyper-targeted and customer-centric. An effective SEO strategy will help deliver your web pages to a relevant audience via pertinent search queries.

As the user is already looking for what you have to offer, organic visibility drives high-quality traffic to your website without attempting to entice or persuade the visitor.

2. SEO Targets Quality Traffic

One of the biggest advantages of SEO is that it’s an inbound marketing strategy.

Unlike traditional “outbound” advertising channels, which involve reaching out to consumers whether they want to hear from you or not, inbound methods center on making it easy for your audience to find you when they want information.

These traditional methods, like cold calling, spam emails, and interruptive ads, are done solely with the advertiser’s goals in mind.

And many consumers find them downright annoying.

inbound marketing, on the other hand, is much more customer-centric. Instead of interrupting consumers as they’re watching TV or listening to the radio, it involves creating helpful resources and making helpful information more easily accessible.

Then, when users are ready to spend some time researching your industry or learning more about their options for a specific type of product, they can find you on their own.

This is not only much more convenient for consumers but also results in more qualified leads for your business.

In fact, in HubSpot’s most recent State of inbound report, 59% of marketers said that inbound practices provided the highest quality leads for their sales teams.

After all, who do you think is going to be more receptive to your marketing efforts: Someone who sees your ad on a billboard during their commute, or someone who comes across a list of tips you published while searching for help online?

The answer is clear.

When you focus on attracting users who are actively looking for information related to your industry, products, and services, you’ll be much more effective in reaching your target audience.

Plus, this gives you the opportunity to reach your audience while they’re already considering making a purchase or contracting a service — increasing the chances that your marketing messages will translate into sales and leads.

3. SEO Offers Impressive ROI

When evaluating digital marketing channels, return on investment (ROI) is often a priority consideration, if not the most important. While SEO results take time, a high-quality strategy eventually delivers impressive ROI.

Search engine leads offer a close rate of 14.6%, nearly 12% greater than traditional marketing – however, if your website ranks at the bottom of page two, three, four, or not at all, leads will likely be non-existent. On the other hand, the first Google listing receives 33% of all search traffic. Search engine visibility directly correlates to boosted web traffic and increased revenue, making ROI one of the most significant SEO benefits for many companies.

4. Builds An Authority

Any business needs to gain the trust of its customers, above all other things. They will rely on Google to take them to the best of available websites. This means that the website needs to appear on the first page of the search results, else it may not look trustworthy. Websites that are visibly higher in organic searches seem to be more trustworthy to the end-users. As discussed earlier, SEO increases both the ranking and visibility of the website by increasing web traffic. It is an essential aspect in building the trust and reputation of the website.

5. SEO gets more clicks than PPC

Although PPC ads appear above organic rankings,71.31% of searches result in a click on an organic result on the first page.

It’s difficult to say why this is, though the most logical conclusion is that users trust Google’s algorithm. They know which spots advertisers are paying for, and they choose to instead visit the pages the search engine has determined to be the best.

Of course, this is just conjecture.

But regardless of the reasoning behind it, the fact is that the majority of the clicks for any given search go to an organic result.

6. SEO Targets the Entire Marketing Funnel

Content marketing, driven by SEO, includes a variety of content types targeting every stage of the marketing funnel. While a top-of-the-funnel or middle-of-the-funnel blog post won’t convert initially, content such as this builds brand loyalty and awareness – traits that lead to conversions.

7. Provides Better User Experience

SEO makes websites more responsive. In today’s world, people expect a page to load merely within two seconds. The longer the load time of a page, the lower is the conversion rate of the page. Increasing the speed of page load reduces the bounce rate, thus encouraging the users to spend more time on the webpage.

SEO takes care to optimize the page for all the mobile visitors as well as users from a laptop or a desktop, hence engaging web traffic from all sources.

8. Improves Content Strategy

SEO works towards providing high-quality website content and enhances its user experience. A successful content strategy includes creating meaningful content, which is cohesive and engaging. This helps in attracting the target market. Creating good content is the key to the success of the companies offering services of SEO in Sydney. They keep track of the ongoing content strategy, optimizing it according to the latest trends. This helps them remain high in the competition.

9. SEO Enhances PPC Success

Paid search engine advertising (PPC) and SEO work well together. Website rankings at the top of paid search results and among first-page organic rankings provide consumers additional opportunities to visit your website and bolster brand credibility. Additionally, SEO data can be utilized to inform and optimize your PPC strategy.

10. SEO is a Long-Term Marketing Strategy

While quality SEO often delivers significant business impact with the first year, SEO efforts will compound over time, leading to increased results for several years. In fact, the magnitude of SEO results and ROI correspond to the budget, effort, and time committed to it. If an SEO company promises instantaneous results, be wary.

Implementing a thoughtful SEO strategy – such as content creation and on-page optimization – and mastering Google’s algorithm take dedicated time. To see the best results of incorporating SEO into your digital marketing strategy, be prepared to view SEO as an investment with remarkable long-term return.

11. Provides Better Visibility And Ranking

SEO makes it easier for prospects to visit the website by increasing its ranking among other competitors, hence, making the website easily visible. It uses techniques like “on-page optimization,” which makes a website friendly to search engines. It ensures that the website has all essential pages and increases the density of keywords and Meta keywords. SEO leverages organic traffic on the website, which boosts the number of people visiting the website.

An increasing number of people visiting the website makes the ranking of the web page higher in search engine results. The ranking of a web page is directly proportional to its visibility.

How does seo work – Crawling, Indexing and Ranking.

Now that you know why search engines work so hard to provide you with great results and why you should care, we can talk about how SEO works in a little more detail.

Search engines have spiders — not the creepy kind, but the automated robot kind.

These spiders collect all kinds of information about your website and the pages that make up your site. This allows them to easily determine when to serve a search page on your site. They collect things like page speed, title tags, social signals, internal linking, backlinks, and so on.

With over 200 ranking factors used by Google in their algorithm, there are a lot of things to consider, and actions that can be taken to try to optimize a website. There are both on-page and off-page ranking factors that determine how well your site is optimized, and therefore how well it ranks.

The on page factors are exactly what they sound like: Things that are actually on the page. This includes title tags, content, site speed, page URLs, image alt tags, internal linking, and more. Off-page factors, meanwhile, are almost entirely based on links to your site from other sites.

It’s important to keep in mind that these bots are automated computer programs and not actual humans. That means they have some limitations.

They can’t access a website like a human would, because they don’t actually see the website: they crawl the code of the website. This means they can’t see images or videos, nor are they impressed by flashy designs or audio clips.

Search engines are used by people when they have a query and are searching on the internet for the answer. Search engine algorithms are computer programmes that look for clues to give searchers the exact results they are looking for. Search engines rely on algorithms to find web pages and decide which ones to rank for any given keyword. There are three steps to how search engines work: crawling, which is the discovery stage; indexing, which is the filing stage; and ranking, which is the retrieval stage.

Step one: Crawling

The first step is crawling. Search engines send out web crawlers to find new pages and record information about them. We sometimes call these web crawlers ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’. Their purpose is to discover new web pages that exist, and also to periodically check the content on pages they’ve previously visited to see whether they’ve changed or been updated.

Search engines crawl web pages by following links they’ve already discovered. So if you have a blog post and it’s linked from your homepage, when a search engine crawls your homepage, it will then look for another link to follow and may follow the link to your new blog post.

Step two: Indexing

The second step is indexing. Indexing is when a search engine decides whether or not it is going to use the content that it has crawled. If a crawled web page is deemed worthy by a search engine, it will be added to its index. This index is used at the final ranking stage. When a web page or piece of content is indexed, it is filed and stored in a database where it can later be retrieved. Most web pages that offer unique and valuable content are placed into the index. A web page might not be placed in the index if:

• Its content is considered duplicate
• Its content is considered low value or spammy
• It couldn’t be crawled
• The page or domain lacked inbound links

Step three: Ranking

The third step is really the most important step, and that is ranking. Ranking can only happen after the crawling and indexing steps are complete. So once a search engine has crawled and indexed your site, your site can be ranked.

There are more than 200 ranking signals that search engines use to sort and rank content, and they all fit under the three pillars of SEO: technical optimization, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization. Some examples of signals that search engines use to rank web pages are:

• Keyword presence in title tag – Whether the keyword or a synonym was mentioned on the page and within the title tag
• Loading speed of web page – Whether the web page loads quickly and is mobile-friendly
• Website reputation – Whether the web page and website is considered reputable for the topic being searched for

Google Crawl

So, you’ve written excellent content and your on-page SEO is on point. Still, how does SEO work in regard to search engines like Google knowing about your efforts?

Google performs something called a “crawl” which basically means that they scan your website for everything mentioned above. If your website displays many noticeable errors such as broken links or content that looks like spam, they will dock you points towards your search ranking.

Fortunately, if your website does have some errors that you’ve been meaning to fix, you can always submit your website page for re-indexing (ask Google to crawl the page again) to ensure that everything is okay.

Conclusion

The ultimate goal of SEO is to help the page grow and fulfill its business goals. It helps in building better relations with the end-users. Increasing visibility and ranking helps the page gain user trust and drives more people to the site. It boosts conversion rates which ensure increased sales and growth of the business. Thus, SEO is an inseparable part of digital marketing and hence hiring services of agencies offering services of SEO in Sydney can be a great boost to your marketing campaign.

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