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Why You Need to Know SEO

You need to know SEO. Here’s why!

You already know that your presence on the web is no longer optional. Today’s digital world is moving quickly and having a single brick and mortar business means your company is being left behind. Luckily, creating a “digital storefront” is easier than ever to do! The hard part? Making sure your business is easy to locate. That’s where search engine optimization, or SEO, comes in!

Imagine an end user with a recent break in: the last straw. An end user ready to convert! She takes to the web and searches “security systems to protect my business.” If your company doesn’t appear in the search results, it’s time to improve your SEO. The whole reason for creating your website was for people to find you!

What is SEO and how do I improve it?

To fully understand SEO, you need to first know how search works. There are over 1.7 billion websites on the internet. Every time a user completes a search, Google crawls those billions of webpages and ranks the best results for the searcher by using an algorithm. The searcher might see something like this:

The first listings that appear are designated by Google with an “Ad” tag. This indicates the companies that paid to be placed at the top of your search. This is a short-term solution for improving your search results. Below the ad listings, you will see the organic search results. These are the results Google designated as the top results for the searcher based on its algorithm. SEO is improving your ranking in the organic listing, the long-term solution.

We know three key factors in Google’s algorithm: relevancy, quality and authority. Your webpages need to meet all these standards before Google picks you for its top rankings.

Relevancy

To rank for relevancy, not only does the content on your website need to be relevant to the search in question, but your business also needs to be located near the searcher. An end user who searches “security systems to protect my business” in Des Moines, Iowa, won’t see the same results as a user searching in New York City, New York.

Quality

Quality is determined by having useful answers for searchers. Google is looking for content that provides the best solution to the searcher’s query. Make sure your content isn’t full of typos or misinformation and that you are providing the answers your potential leads are looking for.

Authority

Ranking for authority is a lot like citing your sources. When you write a paper with someone else’s information, you cite your source. If other web users find your content accurate, informative or useful, they will share and link to your content. Google looks at the number of sites linking to yours and counts that as part of your authority on the web.

The kicker? Google’s algorithm is constantly changing. In fact, it is estimated that the algorithm changes between 500-600 times each year.

Good SEO means being found on the internet, bringing more traffic to your site. GREAT SEO means bringing the right people to your site at the right time, giving you a higher conversion rate. High conversion rates tell Google that users going to your site find what they are looking for, giving you an even higher ranking in the ever-changing algorithm!

What does an SEO strategist do?

Now that you understand how search works, it’s time to implement strategy. Enlisting the help of an SEO strategist makes optimizing your site much easier. An SEO strategist will focus on key areas of optimization including technical SEO, off-site SEO, user experience and contextual SEO. This involves things like making sure your site is easy for Google to find and crawl, optimizing your content with relevant keywords that users are searching for, or that your competitors are already ranking for, and making sure that your website is associated with other digital assets on the web such as your social media channels, Google my Business, review pages, etc.

Hannah McDermott

Marketing Manager