Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through free, organic searches from engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. SEO is considered a “free” form of marketing, allowing people to find your website organically through search engines versus you targeting them through paid advertising. There are many ways to optimize a website for search engine ranking. One of the most significant factors to optimizing is using the right keywords, phrases, and content to attract users. Remember CONTENT is king (and always will be.) But keywords are just one part of a more extensive optimization process. SEO helps you discover technical issues, find missing page information, and when paired with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), can help lead visitors through a conversion funnel (or the desired goal you’d like them to take.)
This process helps the visibility or ranking of a website on a search engine result page (SERP). Website owners use SEO to drive the right traffic to their site, provide the right content to keep users engaged and increase the probability of a visitor converting into a customer. SEO tools can be used to help discover website errors and search engine crawl issues that typically lower the site’s ability to rank.
The dangers of poor SEO
Not optimizing can result in being virtually non-existent on
search engine results pages, low site traffic, and worse, the competition
stealing potential customers. With site errors, users could get frustrated
and immediately leave the website, causing bounce rates to spike, and Google to
suppress a website even more. When a website doesn’t play nice with users,
Google won’t play nice with that website.
Why is it essential to implement SEO on a website?
Search engine optimization can not only help boost searchability and rankings, but it can also increase brand awareness, attract the right audience, drive traffic, improve user experience, and increase conversion rates. If a site is optimized correctly, not only should the site rank on the SERP, but it should attract a user to click through to the website and take a desired action. Keyword research tools reveal what end-users are searching for, similar to your content, in mass quantities. You can use that research to implement a strategy for your website.
SEO is free marketing, and the only thing one has to invest is time researching, implementing, and observing. It may be a slow ROI (as most SEO takes three months to show impact), but if taken the time and done right, the results can prove to be very impactful.
Having a great website user experience starts with the ability to be found, and a retrospective review of site content, site flow, and functionality can increase your chances of that. Several factors go into proper SEO, but if you can slowly work to fix site errors and implement the right keyword strategy, over time, you will see an impact.
For more information or questions regarding search engine optimization or conversion rate optimization, feel free to contact me.