040 - SEO - A Necessary Evil

Podcast Highlights:

00:00 Prologue 

01:33 Introduction of the topic

02:13 SEO's relevance in search rankings

03:10 SEO as an important tactic to your customer journey 

07:08 Some SEO techniques that needs to be considered:

• Content creation
• Link building
• Geographic relevance

10:03 Other marketing strategies that you can incorporate with SEO. 

10:48 End

SEO - a necessary evil

Let’s imagine you have a fantastic website designed using the most up-to-date technology and innovation, but your analytics show no visitors. This is because nobody on the online market is aware of your existence.

So, what’s the point of spending all the money on making it seem nice and trendy if no one can access and find it? Is SEO necessary?

Website development and hosting it on the internet is just not enough. You won’t get the most out of your website unless and until it is seen on search engines. Therefore, search engine optimization (SEO) is the answer to this issue. It is vital since it is designed to assist you in doing so.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs. Paid Advertising

Every marketing campaign strives to get your company in front of prospective buyers. And it is in this area that digital marketing truly shines.

There are two types of search engine traffic: organic and paid.

On the one hand, “organic” ranks, which show at the top of the search results page, are the SEO focus. These are situations that no amount of cash can afford. They’re available, or rather, they’re achieved and gained through SEO efforts and effective tactics. 

The importance of organic traffic to internet businesses and website owners cannot be overstated. It accounts for more than half of all website traffic and can account for up to 50% of a company’s income. 

On the other hand, PPC (pay per click) or CPC (cost per click) are terms used to describe paid search. It’s a form of advertising that shows at the top and bottom of search engine rankings.

Additional information: AdWords is the name of Google’s PPC program.

What can SEO accomplish for you and your company?

In reality, the world of SEO is constantly changing, and the speed of development is always quickening. It’s both a good and bad thing in the world of digital marketing. Such a necessary evil that, when done well, can make a significant difference. 

Let’s expand on these benefits and reasons to see why SEO is so important.

Increase the visibility of your website

A strong SEO approach increases the visibility of your website. Whatever you do, you probably wouldn’t be able to reach as many people without an effective SEO marketing plan.

SEO has good conversion prospects; it identifies the concerns and issues of its audience, builds trust, and persuades prospects that the company is the right one to do business with. You’ll find it difficult with visibility, traffic, and plenty of other ranking issues if you don’t implement SEO all across your site.

Better SEO, more traffic

With SEO, each page on your website can serve as an entry point for those customers looking for something in the search engine. Although there are various other ways to market your website, search engines represent the most effective technique to advertise all kinds of businesses. Most SEO experts know that search engines make up the bulk of website traffic. 

As you track traffic with the right tools, you’ll see that more people visit your site and increase sales. Other than that, the beauty of a well-thought-out SEO plan is that it allows you to reach out to potential clients at every stage of the purchase process, ensuring that your business grows. Also, note that the more relevant keywords a website ranks for, the more traffic it will receive.

Build trust and authority

SEO may help your business become more trustworthy to search engines and rank higher in search engine results pages. The majority of online consumers regard firms that rank highly on big search engines like Google as reliable.

Aside from that, consider site authority and SEO to be in a similar direction. It is common for all that the stronger your SEO, the more authoritative your website will be. Once you get the ball going and your site is developed, ranking for highly competitive keywords becomes a lot easier.

Marketing at a low cost 

SEO is among the most cost-effective types of digital marketing, with a better ROI or Return on Investment. It is cheaper when compared to other marketing techniques such as social media advertising, Google ads, and email campaigns.

Once you begin to rank well with searches, you will profit from the consistent traffic that the search term generates month after month, ensuring that your pipeline of potential clients continues. You will be able to witness your website acquire continuous traffic if you put in some time and money upfront for SEO services charges.

Competitive Advantage

The majority of your competitors have already begun to optimize their websites for search engines and more organic search traffic. Search engine optimization is a never-ending activity, a long-term game. You’re losing ground to your competitor if you don’t keep moving forward and improving your viewpoint. 

So, it’s time to accept the fact that you’ll require efficient basic SEO resources to be in search engine rankings. And that’s the only way to compete in the long run.

The Guide to SEO Success

If you’d like many visits to your website, you need to rank high in Search engines, like Google. So, how do businesses navigate these SEO efforts and stay at the top of search engine results? 

Here are the basics of SEO and tried and true strategies commonly used by SEO experts like me.

SEO Content

Do you realize that great content writing is where your SEO begins and ends? 

Today’s searchers are looking for ways to find solutions to their issues, ask questions, and do other stuff. And this could be where SEO content takes place and serves a point.

Learn from all these questions, and take note:

• How may they benefit from what you do?
•  What sets you apart from your competition, all while ensuring that it’s all done professionally?
• Why should they be interested in how you do it? 

You won’t reap the full benefits of SEO unless you have high-quality content - valuable and credible articles on your website encourage users to remain longer, which can improve your search ranks. However, creating insightful content isn’t the only way to optimize it and make SEO-friendly articles. You can implement a few practices every time you publish site content to make sure it is SEO optimized despite the content format and tool. 

Keyword research

Keyword research reveals what subject and topics people are interested in, provided, and uses the correct SEO tool. This is knowing how popular those topics are with your target audience. But before that, here are the three things you should understand before conducting your research: 

1. Consider the big picture before you start researching keywords.
2. Consider the types of pages that typically appear at the top of search results.
3.  Know what kind of content makes for please and happy users. 

Keyword optimization

• In the headline of your web page or blog post, make sure the main or target keywords appear.
• The URL, page title, and h1 header should all contain your target term or keywords.
• When linking to other web pages on your website, use your keywords (including LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing keywords) as anchor text.
• To put extra emphasis on your keywords (including LSI keywords), use them within the tags. And use them on your subheadings and body.
• Alternative phrases, often known as LSI keywords, should be used. But replace your core keywords with LSI if you think you’re utilizing them too much.
• Create detailed metadata and body text that includes keywords that are effective on both levels. 

Other SEO Content Fundamentals

• Content length - Longer pieces of content have been proven to rank higher in search engines. However, short articles or blog posts are also good for better readability. Take note that you should break up paragraphs into 1-2 sentences or no more than 3-4 sentences. 
• Readability - Google favors content with a specific reading level so that users may grasp it more easily.
• Tone of voice - Maintaining a constant tone of voice in your writing makes it easier for the reader to identify your point of view.
• Formatting - In terms of SEO, the manner you format your text is crucial. The use of headlines throughout the article aids the reader’s navigation of the content. And the use of bullet points facilitates the listing of items to which the reader should pay attention.
• Alt text - For mobility purposes, text that describes a picture is necessary. 

Technical SEO

Any great SEO plan is still founded on the cornerstone of technical SEO. The goal of this method is to improve your website and server. If you don't optimize your site for technical optimization, it won’t be able to rank first (or even on page one) in search results.

So, what does this type of SEO entail? This refers to backend website optimizations that assist web crawlers and visitors to better understand and use your website.

Create an account with Google Search Console

You can start creating a Google Search Console account if you haven’t already. Don’t bother— it’s completely free.

It would help if you used this tool to look at how Google views your website. You can examine your website’s overall performance in search results and individual pages’ performance. You can also see any issues that Googlebot, Google’s crawler, discovers while visiting your site.

Build a navigation system that is SEO-friendly

Regardless of if you have a large or small site, you should review your navigation.

Your primary navigation menu, normally found at the top or left-hand side of your website, is sometimes referred to as your navigation. However, in other circumstances, your company may have different menus that customers can use to locate more information.

Consider your most valuable pages when deciding which pages to include in your main menu. Product and service sites and informational pages about your company and guidelines are common examples. 

Use a URL structure

This technical SEO framework contains a to-do that focuses on optimizing your site’s navigation and URL structure because technical SEO frequently focuses on the discoverability and usability of your website. One well URL gives users and search engines an easy-to-understand description of the content of the page.

Create a mobile-friendly website

There is currently a sizable market for mobile devices. Whatever your business niche is, mobile platforms will almost certainly have a need.

Users’ mobile experiences are ruined if your website does not have a responsive web design. As a result, a significant number of traffic and conversion opportunities are lost. You can target relevant users with a mobile-friendly site to promote and offer services and products. 

Improve the page’s loading time

Page speed is significant for SEO because it has long been recognized as a ranking factor. Users will spend less time waiting if the load time is faster. They can begin reading your content or blog post and interacting with your page sooner, increasing the likelihood that they will stay on your site longer. 

Make a robots.txt

For web crawlers, a robots.txt file serves as an online guide. You can even give explicit instructions to search engine crawlers like Google or other search engines.

What you want to do is prevent web crawlers from accessing your entire website. You should use these instructions to avoid crawlers from overloading your server with requests or visiting uninteresting pages.

Improve internal linking

When making a new post or amending an old one, this refers to the process of linking to other entries on your blog. It would help if you incorporated internal linking into your technical SEO services as your website expands. Internal links can also provide information about the focus and keyword targeting of a page.

To help transmit some link juice to your main pages, include a link to them as well. This not only informs my readers on what useful and related stuff to read next, but it also aids in the slight improvement of my search engine results.

Understand the distinction between on-page and off-page SEO

On-page and off-page SEO are the two types of search engine optimization strategies you can use.

On-page SEO focuses on optimizing elements of your website that are under your control. You can target a search phrase using keyword research, develop a page, and edit the best results using on-page SEO. Your optimization efforts are completely under your control.

In contrast, off-page SEO focuses on boosting the authority of your domain through content development and earning backlinks from other websites. Link building, blogging, social media, and other tactics are examples of these. The power is in your community’s hands. 

SEO white hat vs. black hat

White hat SEO is a tactic, best practices, and strategies that follow search engine guidelines to provide more value to users. While black hat SEO refers to search engine spamming and deception techniques and practices. While black hat SEO can be effective, it exposes websites to the risk of being penalized and de-indexed and having ethical considerations.

Monitoring and tracking of SEO results 

While SEO is required to expand your online business, you need to determine whether your strategies are effective. This is where the analysis and monitoring of results come in. If you notice changes, you’ll know your efforts are paying off. 

It would be best if you first calculated the volume of your search traffic to perform a business growth analysis. This is frequently done by Google Analytics who provides an overview.

Aside from that, customers must scroll to the appropriate depth for an online business owner to attract qualified visitors and make more purchases. They will be able to get to the CTA and take action as a result of this. 

The Bottomline

Organizations that want to build a strong brand should be visible on the internet. Businesses will always require Google and search engines, which implies they will need SEO. Your website’s pages will never be discovered or shared if you don’t have a great SEO plan for content.

Whether you DIY or hire a professional SEO agency, you’ll reap many of the advantages listed above. It takes time to begin rolling, but it’s a lot easier to keep going once you do.

Connect with Gert Mellak:

Email: [email protected]