Search engine optimization is never far from the front page of any techy website. Anyone involved in the development of websites understands the importance of SEO.
However, business owners themselves who steer away from the technical aspects of their website may not be quite as savvy. You may well know that a good website is vital today with ecommerce growing exponentially. But are you mindful of how to make that website work to expand your business?
A highly talented designer can create the most beautiful website ever seen. A good coder can put together some lovely bells and whistles to wow any visitor. Yet, when all is said and done, does that website convert visits into sales? Is it showing up in organic search results? Does anyone even know your website exists?
Here is a brief explanation of what SEO services are, why you may need them, and what they can do for business expansion.
Are you qualified to perform your own SEO?
This would depend on your background, but you may be perfectly capable of performing some SEO work yourself.
To learn the basics behind SEO could take a few short weeks. For others, maybe a couple of months. To learn everything behind SEO though, and all the services involved could take several years.
For an indication, click here for 3wh.com to see the number of services that a typical agency might provide.
Simple SEO can be easy to pick up, but to make a website grow to its potential, and take a business with it, takes much more knowledge.
Four reasons why SEO will help your business to expand
Because people can find you
It may not surprise you to know that the highest-ranked pages consist of such giants as Facebook and Amazon. Hoping to reach that level of organic traffic is going to be simply impossible.
However, improving your SEO can indeed gain you more visitors. SEO covers many areas and includes such things as keywords, content, and UX.
When you put in place a proper SEO strategy for the long-term and keep working at it, you will be more visible on SERPs.
SERPs is the term that refers to search engine result pages. By choice, you would obviously want your business to appear on page 1 and as high up as possible. Without SEO, you have no hope.
Because your visitor’s experience will be improved
Google is constantly tinkering with its metrics and signals. These affect how your website will be ranked. One area that Google looked at last year was how to measure the actual user’s experience.
Checking content and keywords is one thing, but testing how a website performs for the user is a completely different kettle of fish.
Using SEO to follow Google’s Core Web Vitals will mean that your visitors have a better UX. This in turn can lead to a lower bounce rate and increased conversions.
Because you can create more conversions
Speaking of sales, of course, you want to increase your conversion rate. SEO can help this by improving pages where there is a high drop-off. Looking at where visitors leave a site can help to pinpoint ways to increase conversions.
A/B testing can also be performed to find out visitor preferences. This is a very useful way to optimize a site for less drop-off.
Because it is for the long term
One reason that your business will grow through the use of SEO is that when it is done properly, it is a long-term solution.
SEO should never be seen as a short-term or quick fix. If someone promises to get your business to the top of SERPs instantly then they are probably using black-hat methods. This will ultimately fail.
Four SEO changes you need to help your business to expand
Create quality content
Content is extremely important for your SEO to work, video is also very important today. It is believed that visitors will remain on a webpage that has a video for 2.5 times longer than they would normally.
Don’t forget backlinks
One of the most important SEO tips that help to rank in Google is to have quality backlinks.
This means links that point to websites that are authorities in their niche areas. They should also be publishing content that is relevant to your own website to make them effective.
Optimize all your content
The third word of SEO is optimization. This shouldn’t be underestimated and can refer to so many areas including file names and types, and the size of images.
Sift through your site for dead links and remove these. Remove data that is out of date, and look at image alt tags, and meta tags.
Become a local authority
Don’t just write content for your own website. Reach out to relevant sites and propose writing content for them too. If you can provide informative content you will generate a reputation locally.
This will lead to quality backlinks, higher SERPs, and more organic traffic.
Summary
There is simply no doubt about the significance of SEO in helping to drive more traffic to a website. But it is also there to make that website perform better. It will help the site to load faster which then reduces the bounce rate.
Frustration at slow loading sites and poor UX are very big reasons for high drop-off rates. Improving your SEO will help to retain your audience, and in turn, create more conversions.