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A Short Overview of SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization, meaning optimizing your website content and technical setup so that Google (plus other search engines) can crawl, index, and understand your content to rank your web pages higher in search results. This digital marketing strategy will help you increase your site’s visibility and likely more organic search traffic.

If a potential customer or client searches for a topic relevant to your products or services, you want to be on the top of that search engine results page (SERP) alongside your competitors. If you aren’t, another business may have just gained a new customer—or you lost one.

SEO allows you to lead the customer through your buying process. In addition to visibility and increased website traffic, SEO contributes to your company’s authoritative voice in your industry. And that authority builds brand trust, which ultimately becomes brand loyalty.

Why Is SEO So Important for Your Business?

SEO is one of the most powerful digital marketing strategies you can deploy to improve sales, build credibility, increase brand awareness, and gain a leg up on your competitors.

A solid SEO foundation not only attracts new customers but also lets you deepen your business’s relationship with those customers because of the trust you establish with them.

How SEO Works

SEO is about both quality and quantity. Search engines want to provide the most relevant, high-quality results to searchers, so websites need substantive, helpful content and technical optimization to rank well.

A solid SEO strategy typically includes these elements:

  • Keyword analysis
  • Backlink building
  • Content creation
  • Technical maintenance

How SEO Can Boost Your Business?

When your business ranks highly in organic search results, it signifies you are an authoritative source that search engines deem relevant for those queries. Appearing on page one, especially in the coveted top three spots, makes internet users more likely to trust your brand, visit your site, and convert.

According to Search Engine Journal, Google is Americans’ most trusted digital resource. As a result, they’ll trust that your brand has an answer to their question through trust transference—the concept that trustworthiness of one entity can be transferred to another through endorsement.

SEO helps earn clicks and traffic through relevance rather than paid ads. And people often consider organic results more trustworthy.

If your platform provides what your users are looking for—whether that be in the form of information, answers to questions, products, or services—then you begin to establish trust with your customers.

Content Creation

Content is the heartbeat of your website’s SEO strategy. Without helpful content, search engines have nothing to rank. Content is anything your audience reads, watches, or listens to, including:

  • Blogs
  • Webpage text
  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletters
  • Social media posts

You should always strive to publish helpful, robust content that directly answers your audience’s questions.

Internal and External Links

Internal and external links are helpful because they increase your content’s credibility.

You can use internal links anywhere that makes sense to connect two pages within your website. Internal links provide additional context or background information. Or, if you’ve created content in topic clusters, you can use them to promote the related content.

External links provide sources for your readers. For example, if you write about a study because the data is relevant to your topic, you should link to that study in other content pieces. External links also provide additional resources to your readers. For example, if you can link to relevant tools or software.

The best strategy is to link to high-quality external websites (not low-quality spammy ones) and avoid packing your content with extraneous links. Instead, use internal and external links strategically and thoughtfully throughout your content. 

Anchor Text

Anchor text refers to the clickable text that appears as a hyperlink on a web page. Use descriptive anchor text that accurately reflects the linked page’s content to help search engines and readers understand the relevance of the linked page to a particular search query.

AI and SEO

AI stormed onto the stage in 2024 and is impacting many workflows, including how we might approach SEO. For example, ChatGPT’s Advanced Data Analysis lets you upload lists of keywords and analyze which ones you might pursue. It can also help you brainstorm long-tail keywords and potential blog topics to help you compete. Additionally, Google and other search engines are planning significant changes that will make AI part of the search experience, impacting how we approach SEO strategies.

Knowing the Difference Between Paid and Organic Searches

Paid and organic search refer to the two main ways your website can appear in search engine results. Paid search means using advertising dollars for higher placement on relevant SERPs. It requires an ongoing ad budget and is excellent for testing the demand for a product or offer.

A  common paid search strategy is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. With PPC, you bid on specific keywords relevant to your business. When people search for those terms, your ads may show up at the top or side of the results page. You only pay when someone clicks your ad, not just for impressions.

Other paid search models include CPM (cost per mille), when you pay for every one thousand impressions, regardless of clicks. Call-only ads are another option—these aim to drive phone calls rather than website traffic by showing a clickable phone number in search results.

Organic search ranks content naturally based on relevance, authority, and SEO best practices.

Organic SEO takes time to build rankings through content, backlinks, and technical optimization. The goal of organic search is to rank highly for valuable keywords without spending ad dollars. Search results include not just the main organic bluelinks but also other organic formats like images, videos, featured snippets, people also ask questions, and knowledge panels.

Both paid and organic search have vital roles in a digital marketing strategy. For example, PPC quickly drives traffic, tests keywords, and can complement organic SEO efforts.

Contact Us Today for Your SEO Digital Marketing Needs

Having a solid SEO team in your corner is essential to the success of your digital marketing endeavors. If you have any questions about why SEO is important for business or professional search engine optimization in general, contact us today!

We’d love to chat with you about the importance of SEO and how it can support the success of your business. Fill out our online Contact Form to tell us what you’re looking for. We look forward to connecting with you!

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