What Is SEO?
SEO refers to “Search Engine Optimisation.” It has to do with the process of developing your site to make it more visible on search engines whenever people search for keywords, products, and services related to your business on these search engines. The more visibility you have when a related keyword is searched for, the easier it is for you to gain the attention of customers, clients, and prospects.
How Does SEO Work?
Google, Bing, and other search engines employ bots to crawl through pages on the web, moving from site to site, gathering information about those pages, and compiling all of the gathered information in an index. A common analogy often used to describe SEO is the giant library analogy. To understand how SEO works, you can easily think of it as a giant library where the librarian pulls up a book to help you find the right book that has the perfect information based on what you are seeking at a particular time. The bots function as librarians and the book handed to you is a web page.
But search engines do not just give you one book, or one web page. They give you a list of top website pages that have the information you seek. They also offer more pages on the second page, but most people hardly ever go to those second pages. This is why brands, companies, organizations, and more, do their best to rank high on those first pages.
How SEO Has Evolved Over the Years
When SEO was newly discovered as a marketing strategy, there were a lot of things people did to get their pages ranking high, but with the evolving of SEO over the years, these old ways have made way for the new. Some of the ways in which SEO has evolved over the years include;
- No More Black-hat SEO Tactics
In the early days of SEO, webmasters and web designers would stuff their website pages with keywords, even in places where those keywords didn’t belong. They did this to get their pages to rank higher. This keyword stuffing was known as the black-hat keyword stuffing technique. And after a few years of success with this tactic, Google eventually caught up with them and changed its algorithm. Now, instead of pages with black-hat SEO tactics ranking higher, they rank even lower.
- Prioritisation of the Quality of Content Than in the Quantity
In previous years, SEOs focused on the quantity of the content provided, rather than the quality of the content. This allowed for users with poorly written content, duplicity, plagiarism, and stuffed keywords to rank higher even when their web pages were apparently nothing to write home about. Now, however, Google and other search engines prioritize the quality of content over its quantity.
- Rewarding Mobile-Friendly Sites
In the past ten years, there has been a radical shift from desktop to mobile search traffic, as more people make use of their phones to browse through web pages. This is why Google now rewards sites that are also mobile-friendly.
Other ways in which SEO has evolved over the years include putting a permanent end to link schemes and beginning to focus on local SEO, thus encouraging local owners of businesses and helping these businesses to become easily discovered by customers, clients, and prospects.
Top 10 Benefits of SEO
There are a lot of ways SEO online marketing can change your business. In this section, we will be showing the importance of SEO in digital marketing, especially as it has to do with your business’s growth and visibility.
1. SEO saves you money
SEO Marketing strategies, when compared to other traditional forms of advertising and marketing relatively save you more money. Instead of putting all your money into printing flyers and banners, hoping it gets you some conversion and patronage, you get to spend less money with more guaranteed results.
SEO strategies from places like Web Chimpy are cheaper to use than traditional advertising methods. Instead of a ‘throw it at the wall and let’s see what sticks’ mentality, SEO strategies help you target the right customers looking for your products.
2. SEO marketing gives you more ROI
With an effective and efficient SEO system in place, you can easily track how effective your SEO ads are, taking note of your ranking and traffic numbers. You can also measure how many conversions you’re getting from your rankings.
3. SEO marketing makes it easier to navigate your website
With really good SEO tools, you can ensure that all your links and website structures are arranged so that your audience and visitors can easily find what they are seeking on your page.
4. SEO marketing brings more people to your website
This is a major advantage of SEO marketing. It helps you ensure that you have more than enough people visiting your website, checking out your products and services, and patronizing you eventually.
5. SEO marketing gives you more trust and credibility
It goes without saying that if your website or company comes up among the very first links on the first page, you are perceived as trustworthy and reliable. Potential customers easily assume that your company is more credible since Google trusts you enough to place you as one of the first options. Not only does this help you get more visitors but it also helps you make more sales.
6. SEO marketing keeps you competing
You stand a chance with SEO Marketing to be a fierce competitor in your industry. The more effective your SEO is, the more you prove both to competitors and potential customers that you are the perfect option and the best in the market.
7. SEO marketing helps you with business expansion
If your SEO helps you get enough traffic, you can soon begin to look at the expansion of your products and services, especially if you begin to get more audience from people from other cities and countries. You can consider setting up other branches in other cities and positioning them in a way that meets the needs of clients and consumers in other states.
8. SEO marketing gives you more internet presence
When your website and company keep on popping up whenever relevant keywords are searched, your audience soon becomes familiar with your brand’s name, and soon enough, they are going straight to your website to seek information and make inquiries.
9. SEO marketing helps you get more clicks
It is said that the website ranked number 1 gets closely up to 60% of all clicks. This means that the other websites and web pages have to struggle to share the remaining 40% which is barely enough for even one website to get the ended conversion. This is why SEO Marketing helps you get more clicks and places you at the top of those search results.
10. SEO marketing provides you with information about your audience
SEO Tools show you what your potential clients and consumers are searching for and how you can meet those needs. It shows you what they are buying or what they are seeking to buy, helping you to understand them better and satisfy their needs.
In all, SEO has not only changed the world of marketing, but has also changed the world of businesses, brands, and organizations in different industries. It has given marketing a new name and has given business owners a new and cost-effective way to satisfy clients and make more sales.