Strategic Surge Ltd Leeds | What Is Search Engine Optimization And Why Does It Matter?
SEO or search engine optimization is the use of strategies to increase the number of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in search engines’ “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of organic search traffic – sometimes with no cost per click! SEO can help companies improve their brand’s reach, broaden their audience, drive online sales, generate leads, increase online presence and make easier access to information about products/services they offer. Alongside content marketing, social media marketing & email marketing forms part of modern-day digital marketing under the umbrella term ‘online marketing.
WHY IS SEO IMPORTANT?
Achieving higher ranks on search engines is imperative for any business. With more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it’s easy to see why SEO is so important. When you’re showing up on pages 1, 2, or 3 of Google’s search results, that means your website has achieved a high ranking in the algorithmic or natural list of search engine results for one or more of the keywords related to your business.
If you are still wondering why SEO is so important, then ask yourself who would want to be at the top of this list?
1) The first two listings on Google’s search results get clicked around 65% of the time. People only have so much patience when it comes to their web searches so being at the top is tough.
2) Around 33% of users don’t bother clicking past page 1 in search engine results. That means that people are seeing your website whether they’re interested in what you offer or not! If that isn’t impressive enough, well over 50% of searchers will end up on page 2 or 3 meaning that there is a huge chunk of people who will never even see your website unless you’re showing up on page 1.
3) Only roughly 20% of the audience uses the last search result for their query! This means that if your website doesn’t show up in Google’s top three results, you won’t be able to gain direct access to 80% of potential or existing customers. Consider this – 65% x 33% x 50% = 17%. So only about 17 out of every 100 people are searching through page 2 and beyond… But keep in mind that there could be hundreds, thousands, or even millions more people who don’t go past page one because they assume that nothing relevant would pop up on the second/third pages. While it is true that not everyone does their searches using those pages, even if you see a fraction of those people it could still be hundreds or thousands of visitors.
THE IMPORTANCE OF KEYWORDS IN SEO
How important are keywords in SEO you ask? If there wasn’t any importance it would be really easy to rank for many keywords including ‘SEO’ – which is not the case.
There are two options of how your site can rank; either organically (totally free) or by paying Google (or other search engines). If you choose organic, then you need to know what makes YOUR website different from the others. A keyword is a good way of doing this because using relevant keywords on your site, will make it appear more targeted to users; if they type these keywords into Google, your page will show up more often than another page with different information.
On average there are nine suggestions per second for new pages and one new page is created every second on the Internet, so it’s important to stand out from the crowd.
You need to stand out from the crowd so that your page is one of the results – if it isn’t, then you won’t get any traffic.
Seo keywords help search engines understand what your site is about, and why they should rank you higher against other competitors. Every keyword has a certain amount of ‘weight’, this varies between different keywords and how competitive the niche is. By researching which keywords are most beneficial for your niche, will improve your rankings with Google.
HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT KEYWORDS FOR YOUR WEBSITE
The most important thing to do when starting your search for the right SEO agency is to assess what keywords you are currently targeting. You can uncover these using a free tool called Google Adwords Keyword Planner. Once you have this information, it’s time to look at research and auditing.
A very useful way of showing potential SEO agencies exactly what you are looking for is by researching your competitor’s websites and seeing where they are ranking on page one of Google for certain keywords that you deem to be relevant. By doing this, you can show the agencies what you would like them to achieve for your website, and then they can plan how to go about achieving these results.
Another really good way of showing an SEO agency exactly what it is that you are looking for is by auditing your current site yourself. You can do this by using several different free online software tools or hiring someone from Fiverr for a relatively low price.
This way, you can get a good idea of how strong your website currently is in terms of its on-page SEO. After this, it is very important that you conduct some competitor research and then show the agencies what keywords you would like them to aim for on page one of Google.
The best way to go about doing this is by using a spreadsheet for comparing your current rankings with those of your competitors. It’s also a great idea to keep track of any changes that have been made to a websites’ ranking positions over time. This helps with future recommendations and projects as you’ll be able to see the direct results from previous SEO work done for other websites by certain agencies.
If you are struggling with some aspects of SEO yourself or simply want to take the reins on some of it, you can always count on Strategic Surge LTD!
WHY CONTENT MATTERS WHEN TRYING TO RANK HIGHER ON A SEARCH ENGINE, INCLUDING HOW LONG IT SHOULD BE AND WHAT TYPE OF CONTENT SHOULD BE INCLUDED.
Content is an integral part of search engine optimization. The more you have, the better chance your website will have of ranking on the search engines. That doesn’t mean just pumping out content for the sake of it though, what matters is that this content is written with both users and search engines in mind. This means including words and phrases likely to be used by people when looking for your type of business through a search engine; as well as writing attractive content which helps navigate (and keep) visitors on your site. Here are some answers to questions often asked about what makes good quality content for SEO purposes: How long should my content be?
For best results, your content needs to be both high quality and relevant. Quality is measured in several ways, including the readability of the content, how useful it is for users if you’re targeting the right keywords for your industry – and so on. Content should usually have about 300 words- this allows Google to crawl through most of it in one go before deciding whether to rank it or not, but also means that people will usually want to read more than just a few sentences! You can then add images/videos etc later to provide extra information for both search engines and users interested in finding out more.
The main types of content which are likely to attract links back from other websites, as well as attention from search engines, include blog posts, news articles, and how-to guides. Make sure you include a call to action too – pointing users towards your products/services and encouraging them to find out more.
You can post new content pretty much whenever suits your business, but it’s best not to go crazy and bombard the search engines with dozens of pages created in just a day or two! If you’re posting regularly (at least once per week) then this is usually fine because Google will understand that your website gets updated regularly. If you’re not, then try to at least vary what you post so it doesn’t look like everything was written in the same week.
As mentioned above when trying to rank higher in search engines content is one of the key things that helps display your website. If done correctly this can benefit your business immensely and help it grow into something bigger than before. If you’re struggling to produce any content then it’s probably time to hire an SEO agency.
As you can see if done correctly content is key for trying to rank higher in the search engines. If you are struggling with this many SEO agencies can help provide advice and methods for generating more unique content then we are here to help!
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