What is SEO and Why Does it Matter?
When you enter a search query into Google, what pages are you most likely to check out when you hit enter? For most people, the answer to this question is the web pages that appear on the first page of the search results. According to Backlink, the top spot on a Google search receives 32% of all clicks for that search across the board. This means that vying for the top spot is well worth the time for any business, and this can be done by developing an effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. We’ve broken down the key components of SEO for you, including what it is and why it’s important, to help you as you consider making updates to improve the impact of your website.
What is SEO?
Broadly defined, SEO refers to a set of practices and strategies that work together to improve the appearance and positioning of websites in a search engine’s organic results. Organic search is the main way that most people searching online find content, making an effective SEO strategy crucial to establish your business as trustworthy. It’s important to continually reevaluate your website and find areas for improvement to remain competitive with other businesses in your industry that are also competing for top spots on the search engine results page.
How Does SEO Help Your Web Traffic?
Search engines use crawlers to gather information about page content for websites. When a user enters a query into search engines like Google and Bing, the search engine pulls together a list of pages that it flags as most relevant and accurate based on information that crawlers have added to the search engine algorithms. There are many factors that impact this process including factors like domain age, keyword in your domain, domain history, and so forth, as well as page-level factors like work count rankings and content length. By keeping SEO best practices in mind as you create content for your website, you’re more likely to gain favorable keyword rankings.
What are the most important elements of SEO marketing?
Ranking factors are defined as criteria that Google and other search engines use to rank websites and determine positioning in the search engine results pages. SEO marketing can become frustrating for the inexperienced since factors that contribute to page ranking are constantly changing and evolving. In fact, Google has confirmed that it uses hundreds of different factors to determine site rankings! Below are some of the most important search ranking factors according to Search Engine Journal:
How to create SEO content that works
Now that you have a good understanding of what SEO is and how it can help with your brand awareness, we have tips to keep in mind as you update your web pages to be SEO-friendly. Keep in mind, the factors that Google and other search engines use to score and rank content are complex, so these are just a few things to focus on as you’re getting started.
- Keywords: Include specific keywords in your content that you know audience members are searching for. For example, if you were writing a blog post about public transportation options, you might include keywords like “active transport” or “public transport” in the body copy of the post for crawlers to pick up on.
- Content relevance: Publishing content towards your angle and what you do will positively impact your site visibility. As an advertising agency, we post content relevant to the disciplines we’re skilled in, including media buying, social media, digital marketing, and of course, SEO.
- Off-Page SEO: Populating your content with links will help increase your site ranking and visibility with people online. This is an easy way to improve the performance of your website and content.
- Search Engine Marketing: Paid efforts like native ads, social media ads, pay-per-click (PPC), and more all help with SEO. Read about PPC in the first part of our recent blog series.
Our digital marketing experts can help provide counsel as you’re making SEO updates to your webpage and provide suggestions on how you can improve your site ranking. Email us at info@affirmagency.com and let’s discuss how we can partner with you!
