If you’re familiar with the term SEO, you know it stands for search engine optimization — a strategy used to increase a website’s visibility on top search engines.
However, you might be wondering why this digital marketing strategy is so effective and how you can profit from it. Learn everything you need to know about this tactic from our team at BRANDefenders.
How is SEO Used?
In the digital age, when most people need information about a product or service, they will turn to a popular search engine, like Google, to find answers.
Once they have been presented with a list of websites, people will generally click on the sites near the top of the list first. This will create more traffic on those top-ranking websites, leading to more customers and sales — successful digital marketing.
SEO mainly uses content packed with keywords, media, and metadata to help a website rank in the top search results page. Content can be in the form of blogs, guest posts, and buyer’s guides.
Additionally, live links are often strategically embedded into the content to direct readers to other parts of the site, creating an organic flow and keeping a viewer on that page longer.
The Benefits
1. Increased Brand Familiarity and Awareness
When more people visit your website and stay on it longer, they will be more likely to remember your brand.
This may lead to your company gaining a positive reputation amongst your customers over time from your digital marketing efforts.
2. Saves Money on Advertisements
With organic traffic from SEO, you can reap some benefits of advertisements without paying high prices.
Your page will automatically be on the top of the search results, so you do not have to worry about investing in pay per click or advertising your page.
3. Boosts Physical Visits to a Local Business
Typically, when a small business appears in the top search results, customers visit those physical locations and make purchases there.
For example, when people search for “restaurants near me,” they will usually visit one of the first restaurants in the results list and spend money there.
4. Brand Credibility
SEO can help your brand seem more credible to consumers because it appears first on a search engine’s results page. It can also suggest that you are superior to your rivals and that your company has a solid online presence.
Your brand can gain a leg up and bring in additional consumers with higher perceived credibility.
5. Increases Social Media Activity
When your webpage receives more traffic, it can also help boost the number of people who visit your social media pages, especially if you link them on your site.
Once people begin to follow you on social media, they’ll be able to receive updates regularly about your products and services, which can improve sales. If you’re not sure how to boost your social media activity without overwhelming yourself with more daily tasks, the BRANDefenders team can help.
Statistics
There are plenty of statistics that show why SEO is a great digital marketing tool.
- Google remains the most popular search engine used worldwide, receiving over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year.
- On the first page of search results, 67.60% of the clicks go to the first five websites listed. The websites ranking under those first five receive much less attention and clicks.
- Google’s search and advertising tools helped provide $335 billion of economic activity for more than 1.3 million businesses, website publishers, and nonprofits nationwide. Yours could be part of this boost.
With lots of evidence of the power of SEO, it’s no wonder why people are constantly turning to building their organic traffic rather than relying on paid ads. If you’re spending too much on ads, professional services from a team like BRANDefenders may be a far more profitable investment.
What Google Looks for in a Website
Now that we have established the advantages of SEO let’s talk about how a website can gain a better online presence and what Google looks for in a top-ranking website.
Google uses an algorithm that considers at least 200 factors to determine how sites are ranked in the search results.
Here are some factors that can help a website make it to the top search page.
1. High-Quality Content
Google rewards websites that possess high-quality content. Content should be credible and accurate, displaying reputable sources and good grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Additionally, Google requires content to be engaging and unique. For example, many top-ranking pages include images, videos, and other forms of media accompanying text to keep readers interested.
2. Keywords
When individuals search for information online, they type in specific phrases or words. These words are taken into account when the system presents relevant results. Due to this, Google tends to display pages that contain exact words and phrases over ones that do not.
Researching commonly used keywords can help you to determine which terms and expressions are being rewarded by Google so that you can utilize them in your content on your company’s website.
3. User Friendliness
If your website is not user-friendly, you can forget about it showing up in the top five results on Google.
If a website takes a long time to load or has a slew of pop-up advertisements on it, it frustrates visitors and leads to them leaving the page right away. When visitors leave your page, they go to another (possibly your competitor) to retrieve their information, which isn’t good news for your business.
You want to keep your page running smoothly to ensure that visitors remain on your website because this will help increase traffic and improve visibility.
4. Layout
Finding information should be fast and easy on your website. Therefore, you need to pay attention to your site’s architecture.
Pages and navigation should be laid out as simply as possible to help improve search engine optimization and user-friendliness.
5. Age of Your Content
Google wants to provide relevant and current information, prioritizing newer content. Older content is pushed to the background because it will no longer be considered up-to-date or valuable.
If you want your webpage to appear in the top five results, your content needs to be updated with new pieces of information. Therefore, you cannot simply reuse old articles.
6. Optimized for Mobile Use
The average person uses smartphones, tablets, and other forms of portable technology to search the web for information. Therefore, more businesses are investing in mobile-friendly websites because they know that it will increase the traffic and visibility of their sites.
Being mobile-friendly is especially important for local businesses that thrive on physical visits to their property. When a person searches for nearby products or services, a business’s ability to pop up in the top results could mean more customers and sales.
Google also considers this with its search results and factors in proximity and relevance for nearby establishments.
7. Readability
Once again, you want to have as few distractions and issues on your website as possible, which means your content needs to be easy to read and understand. The average person will not understand technical terms and vocabulary, so your content must be simple enough to comprehend.
Additionally, avoid large blocks of text because viewers will not want to read through them. It’s best to break up your content into small paragraphs so that readers can quickly go through your article to retrieve information.
8. Backlinks
Backlinks are when links to other websites are strategically used within content, such as blogs and guest posts.
They help establish a sense of credibility and authority for that particular website. Additionally, it shows search engines that other websites vouch for your content.
Keep in mind that some backlinks are more valuable than others. For instance, it’s better if your website is linked to a very reputable, trustworthy website. However, if your website is linked to low-authority, suspicious websites, it could harm your search engine ranking.
It’s also beneficial if another reputable website mentions yours on their page because it will help you to gain consumers’ confidence.
Hiring Professionals
Most business owners do not have the time to take on the extra work required for this detail-oriented strategy, so they turn to specialists who can do it for them.
Specialists have training and experience to get your website more traffic. Companies like BRANDefenders make optimization much easier and more manageable. We have the expert knowledge to properly market your brand and give you a strong internet presence.
Get Started on Your Digital Marketing Plan
SEO is an essential marketing tool that will get your company where it needs to be. Hiring a company to enhance your internet presence is the best way to go because they have the experience to get your site more visibility.
Most businesses are already using search engines to their benefit, and companies that have not jumped on the bandwagon are falling behind. Don’t let your business get lost amongst the competition — let BRANDefenders help.
Get in touch with us about SEO for your website today.