Every business wants to grow and survive in the market. To grow business, one needs to have customers that are loyal to the business. For this, the business needs to increase its organic search. It needs to focus on increasing traffic on the website. SEO is the best tool to optimize your website and increase traffic on your website.
It is important to know that users only visit those websites that are ranked higher on search engines. Other websites are ignored by users. Every business needs to optimize their website to rank higher on the search engines. So, the use of SEO becomes very important for the business.
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of increasing traffic on your website by making your website visible on search engines. It is a tool to increase organic traffic on your website by optimizing your website and ranking higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Every business needs to optimize their website to increase targeted website traffic from search engines such as Google,Yahoo, Bing, etc.
White hat vs black hat
If you want to optimize your website then you need to know about the white hat and black hat SEO methods.
White hat SEO optimizes a website following the search engine guidelines. Google has set guidelines for optimizing the website to rank higher on search engine results pages. So, white hat SEO follows these guidelines. It is a legal way to optimize website without violating the guidelines. White hat SEO includes creating quality content that solves user problems and provide them the needed content. It focuses on titles, keywords, keywords research, inbound links, outbound links, etc. It mostly focuses on human audience.
Black hat SEO optimizes a website breaking the guidelines set by the search engines like Google. It is all about violating the rules and getting quick results. It focuses on search engines rather than the user. It relies on violating Google’s algorithm to improve and rank higher on the search engine results pages. It focuses on keywords stuffing, content spamming, links farming, hidden texts and links, etc. This can lead to your website to be de-indexed or banned from search engines.
How SEO works?
We can say that every business wants their website to rank higher in search engine results pages. Every business mostly focuses on Google results pages as it is popular and the most used search engine on the Internet. SEO focuses on improving your website speed, performance, keywords, titles, etc. that helps to index your website on search engine results pages.
To rank higher, one needs to follow the guidelines of search engines. So you need to understand the guidelines and how search engines rank your website. Search engines provide the best results for the users. They provide high-quality content, valuable, and most importantly the pages that are searched by the users. For this, the search engine focuses on keywords, titles, content, and so on.
Search engines like Google use algorithm to index websites on results pages. Different ranking factors are included in search engine’s algorithm. The search engines with the help of such algorithms will scan or crawl different websites to understand those websites better. This helps search engines to provide the content that the users are searching for in search engines. Scanning the websites will help in identifying the user-friendly websites, their performance, and speed.
Factors that impact SEO
There are many factors that impact the ranking of websites such as links, keywords, meta descriptions, titles, speed, and so on. The search engines algorithm considers many factors to rank the websites. Google considers 200 ranking factors in their algorithm. It is hard to list them all so, here are some of the factors that impact SEO.
Content
Search engines mostly consider high-quality content and valuable content that the users are searching for. Quality content helps to rank your website high in the search engine results pages. The content should be well-written and more engaging. This will help to increase visitors to your website. Apart from creating high-quality content, you should also focus on keywords, meta descriptions, images, etc. Having relevant keywords that the users are searching for will also help to rank your webpages on search engines.
Posting new posts timely can help to attract users and increase traffic on your website. So, the most important is to focus on creating high-quality and relevant content. Not only creating, but marketing the content is very crucial for boosting the online presence and ranking higher.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO refers to optimizing the content and HTML code of any website. Some of the on-page factors that impact SEO are:
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Title tag: The title tag gives information on the content you are writing. It tells the search engine what your content is about. The title should be less than or equal to 70 characters.
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Meta description: Meta description gives a brief introduction to what your content is about. It is a brief summary of your content. The meta description should be less than or equal to 160 characters. Meta description is displayed on search engine results pages below the URL of the website.
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Sub-headings: Sub-headings are defined using different heading tags in the content such as H1, H2, H3, and so on. This helps users to read and navigate the content easily.
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Keywords: Keywords are one of the most important factors that impact SEO. Many businesses still use generic keywords in their content but the long-tail keyword is gaining attention. They have low search volume but have less competition. Such keywords help to rank higher in the search engine results pages. Keywords should be included in the title, meta description, sub-headings, images, and so on. Such practices help to rank high on the search engines.
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Internal links: Internal links are the links from one page to another page on your website. This way the visitors are not limited to one page of your website. They can view another page related to the article that helps visitors to understand your website. This also helps search engines to know more about your website.
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Images and videos: The use of images and videos in the content also impacts SEO. The use of images and videos help to engage visitors more in your content. This also helps to make your content more attractive and more engaging. The image name and alt tag should include keywords. This helps to display images on the search engines when a user searches for an image. This helps to index your website and images on search engines.
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Duplicate content: Avoid copying the content of others as this may affect your ranking in a negative way. Duplicate content can help search engines to de-index your website. So, write original content and avoid duplicating contents written by others.
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Content updates: You need to update your content as search engines consider updated content. Situation change so the problems of the visitors also change. So, you need to update the contents that are relevant to the visitor’s problems.
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Outbound links: Outbound links are those links that redirect visitors to another webpage. Having outbound links in the content can help to increase trust. This can impact SEO as the search engines also consider inbound and outbound links.
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Speed: Loading speed has been one of the main factors for ranking higher on the search engine results pages. Google’s algorithm considers webpage loading speed for indexing websites on the search engines. In every platform, your webpage should load faster.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to those activities that are done away from your website to rank higher on the search engine results pages. It is also known as link building. Some of the off-page factors that impact SEO are:
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Backlinks: Backlinks are the incoming links to your website. Such backlinks help to rank higher on the search engine results pages. A webpage with lots of backlinks is ranked higher on the search engines. Backlinks are one of the factors that help to increase traffic on your website.
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Social: Social likes and shares help to increase visitors on your website. High-quality content and valuable contents encourage people to share content. This helps to expand the visitor's reach. This also helps to reach influencers that in turn increases traffic on your website if the feedback is positive.
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Number of linking domains: Linking domains are sites that link to your website. Google’s algorithm also considers the number of linking domains for ranking the website on search engines.
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Contextual links: Contextual links are the links within the body of the content. It makes easier for users to navigate to another page. This helps to boost the traffic on your website.
How SEO can help you
Every business needs to consider investing in SEO optimization. If you want to increase organic traffic on your website, then you should optimize your website. If you worry about your traffic, then you should start optimizing the website using SEO tools. Let’s see the importance of SEO that helps to increase traffic.
High return on investment (ROI)
SEO helps to boost organic traffic on your website. An increase in organic traffic to your website increases your website visibility on the search engine results pages. As a result, it attracts visitors and expand your customer reach. It also attracts influencers. Reviews from such influencers helps to increase traffic. More the visitors more cost per click (CPC). Affiliate marketing is another factor that helps to increase the return on investment.
Increases sales and leads
With the help of SEO tools and strategy, you can convert visitors to loyal customers. Creating high-quality and relevant content helps to attract visitors. This helps them to follow the content of the website. Providing rich content that solves their problem helps to increase leads and sales. You can also sale productize service as a source of income. This also helps to increase sales and leads.
Will never disappear
SEO is not going to disappear anytime soon. The ranking factors and methods may change but SEO will never change. Rather, it will evolve over time. Every business should adapt to changing SEO techniques and follow search engine SEO guidelines. As long as the Internet exists, SEO is also going to exist.
Boosts traffic
SEO has become the most important tool for increasing traffic on websites. Optimizing the websites will increase the performance and enhance the website's speed which makes the user experience better and smoother. Also posting articles regularly and optimizing the content will make visitors expect more articles in the future too. You can also sell your products and services online. There are many customers that are searching for products and services online. So, providing products and services to the customers will boost the traffic on websites.
Provides quality content
Google is focusing on content and is improving its algorithm that ranks websites based on quality content. Because of this, every business is trying it's hard and is providing high-quality content and relevant content that the users are searching for.
Increases visibility and opportunities
SEO is used for ranking webpages on search engine results pages. This means to make the webpage visible to the visitors. Visitors often view the initial results page of the search engines. This encourages businesses to optimize their webpage and try their hard to rank higher on search engines. This makes visitors aware of the business and its products and services. This also helps businesses to find new opportunities to optimize their business. In this way, SEO helps to increase visibility.
Better user experience
Quality SEO focuses on enhancing the user experience. One way is to provide high-quality and relevant content that the users are searching for. Another way is to optimize the website so that it helps users to experience better and smoother performance and also to navigate the website easily.
Builds trust
SEO is perfect for creating trust and converting visitors to loyal customers. Mainly SEO tactics are used to rank higher on Google. Every day millions of people use Google. People trust Google. So, ranking higher on Google helps to build trust among the visitors as Google is the most popularly used search engine. Expectations will increase. So, fulfilling their expectation help to build trust and increase the visibility of the business, thus boosting traffic.
Surpass competitor
Implementing a good SEO strategy will help you to outrank your competitors. Implementing the above strategy will help you to surpass your competitors and dominate the online market. Building trust with visitors will help to boosts traffic on your website. Providing high-quality content will help to reach more visitors online. It helps to increase conversion rate. This way, SEO will help to create a business image and reputation in the market and convince users to do business with you.
You are now aware of the fact how powerful SEO can be if implemented correctly. Every business whether small or large or even the startups should start implementing SEO strategies. If you want to have long-term benefits then you should seriously think about it. You are losing money and customers every day by not implementing SEO strategies.
At Truemark, we have SEO experts who will help you optimize your website. So, if you want to work with us, please feel free to contact us.
References
https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/what-is-seo-and-how-it-works/
https://unamo.com/blog/seo/30-important-google-ranking-factors-beginner-know
https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/seo/black-hat-vs-white-hat-seo/
https://seorankserp.com/why-every-business-needs-seo/
http://www.lifestylemirror.com/6-reasons-why-every-business-needs-seo/