A Beginner's Guide to SEO, Answers to Common Questions In 100 Words [Or Less]
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the magic behind the online marketing of products and services. It’s the suite of techniques that help your website become more visible to the people you wish to reach by improving its rank in search engine results pages or SERPs. When customers search for words and ideas related to your business, good SEO helps them find you faster.
Though it’s a specialized and technical field, there’s no need to be intimidated! This beginner’s guide will help you demystify some of the basic questions around SEO and get you on the path to improving your business's online presence.
How does SEO help my website?
A well-optimized website will be one of the first websites to show up when a person makes a search for a specific keyword, like “marketing services.” SEO makes that optimization happen by utilizing keyword optimization, backlinks, title and image tags, and more. Taking into account these factors, as well as other criteria like visitor behavior and website design, search engines decide how your website will rank when searched. The better the optimization, the higher your website will be on the SERP, leading to more customers at your digital door!
What is an SEO strategy?
SEO strategy is the formal game plan to get more customers to your website by way of search engines. By leveraging on-page strategies like intent-based keywords and topic-oriented content, SEO strategy can help make your website more visible to users. SEO strategy goes beyond tuning up your own website as well! Earning inbound links from other websites can help draw traffic to your site even when users have visited other pages first. Good SEO strategy includes focusing on the topics and intent of your content versus loading your page up with keywords. Attracting your target audience in organic and relevant ways is key to turning those visitors to customers for your business.
What is direct traffic?
If you’ve ever accessed a website by typing the URL into the browser, then you’ve participated in direct traffic. Direct traffic happens when someone arrives on your website, whether via URL or a bookmark, without any sort of referral link from a different website. This type of website traffic is important but the customer must already know the name of your brand and website and currently be searching for you. What about all the customers who don’t know about you yet? SEO helps elevate your brand so you’re getting more than just direct traffic on your website.
What is an organic search?
An organic search is when a person types in a query into a search engine with the connotation of clicking on a non-paid search result. With proper SEO and high SERP ranking, that person could be led right to your website with their first click! Organic search is an important way to get traffic on your website. “Organic” is the key word here: creating content that is relevant, naturally flowing, and actually answers the person’s query is far superior to filling your page with buzzwords and key phrases. Search engines will actually identify this so-called “keyword stuffing” and decrease a website’s SERP ranking.
What is organic traffic?
The customers who come to your website by way of the aforementioned organic search are considered organic traffic. When considering organic traffic, it’s important to also consider how social media can influence users and lead them to your page. SEO assesses social signaling from Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and more to increase website traffic. SERP ranking can increase depending on how social media marketing is leveraged. When using SEO for your business, it’s critical to understand how social media plays a role in your success and how it can lead to more customers on your page.
What is paid search engine marketing?
If direct traffic and organic searches aren’t generating enough activity on your website, there are more options to help you succeed. Paid search engine marketing allows your brand’s page to appear above the organic results (as ads) on a SERP. Paid ad campaigns can be inexpensive (as low as a dollar per click!) but price increases with keyword popularity. You can pay to have your brand be one of the very first pages a user sees when they search a particular keyword, which gets more customers directly to your business.
How much do SEO services cost?
The price of SEO services can vary greatly depending on how you employ it to help your brand. If you manage your website’s SEO yourself, it can cost as little as $100 to $500 monthly by using a keyword research tool. Keyword research tools are programs that parse out how often keywords are searched and how those keyword searches change over time. Tapping into this kind of tool is a simple, inexpensive way to take SEO into your own hands. SEO prices increase when hiring a consultant or if you work with a comprehensive marketing agency.
Why does SEO matter?
Ultimately, organic traffic is king. For most brands - most sites - the majority of their traffic comes from organic search. Paid SEM is a great tool to drive traffic, but this will not be sustainable for many brands. SEO can help drive your site to the top of search results, helping you to make long-term gains in traffic and visibility.
What are the basic steps to doing SEO?
There are many ways of doing SEO but here is the general outline to SEO success for your brand:
Inventory/audit of your website’s content.
Employ keyword research tools (see “How much does SEO cost?”) to see how people currently find your website.
Find new keywords for which your brand might rank well.
Tune up your content, new and existing.
Observe how your website’s performance changes.
Create more opportunities for backlinks from other websites.
Continue to check in on how your SERP ranking changes.
SEO may seem daunting but the basic principles are simple. It’s important to understand so your brand can reach its highest potential. This beginner’s guide sheds light on just the big picture of SEO. Now it’s time for you to dig in further and see how some small changes in your website’s presence can lead to big changes for your business! It’s not magic or luck that leads to drumming up business on the internet; SEO’s concrete strategies are key to building a brand’s online success.
