What is SEO and why do you need it for your business?

Even worse, your competitors might be there so they will take all of the leads you could be targeting.

If you have a website and you’re trying to find ways to attract new customers, you’ve probably already heard about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). It’s a highly effective way to drive traffic to your website and provide you with the chance to convert visitors into customers. 

Having a full understanding of what SEO is, how it works and what it can provide for your business can help you to decide whether it’s the right strategy for your business and something you should be investing in. 

In this blog, we’ll explain exactly what SEO is, how it works and why it’s important for your business. 

What is SEO? 

The definition of SEO 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. In short, this means optimising your website and content in order to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to your website. 

Implementing an effective SEO strategy will ensure that your website is visible when customers search for your products, services, or information related to your business in search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine. 

If you can get your website to appear on the first page of these search engine’s results pages for the queries that are relevant to your business, you will drive traffic to your website. And not just any traffic, high-quality traffic. 

How does SEO differ from paid search?

The biggest difference between SEO and paid search or pay per click (PPC) is that SEO involves ranking ‘organically’ rather than paying for it. When you enter a search query into Google, the paid results appear at the top of a page, and the organic results come just under. Ranking on the first page of the search results is the best way to get your brand seen. 

You can learn more about how SEO and PPC differ in our blog: SEO vs PPC: Which strategy should you be using?

In the example below, you will see the paid results highlighted in red and the organic results for this particular search query highlighted in green. 

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Key components of SEO 

When you implement an SEO strategy for your business, you will need to think about a number of different elements. Each of these elements will form your SEO strategy and help both search engines and users to understand your website and its content: 

• On-page SEO is the process of optimising the pages on your website for relevant keywords. It could be your product or service pages of your website or blog pages. Optimising this content will help your website to rank in the search engines for the search terms related to your business. 
• Off-page SEO is anything you do outside of your website to boost search engine rankings. This could be link building, social media, reviews, guest blogging, or influencer marketing. The goal is to ensure Google sees your site and business as authoritative and trustworthy, which can have a significant impact on your rankings. 
• Technical SEO is all about improving your website to make it easier for search engines to find and understand your content and business, which in turn helps the algorithm rank your website. 
• Local SEO helps you to optimise your website so you appear in search results for your local customers. This is perfect if you have a physical location or you only want to drive traffic from a specific location.

How do search engines work? 

Organic search is now one of the main ways in which people discover content, products and services online, so if you rank in the top positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs), you will increase traffic to your website. 

Search engine such as Google use complicated algorithms to decide whether your website will be shown for a particular search query. No one really knows exactly how it works (apart from Google!), but we do have a good idea as to how you can improve your chances of ranking higher in the SERPs. 

Let’s take a closer look at exactly how it works: 

Step 1: Crawling 

Once you’ve published a page on your website, search engines such as Google crawl website pages from all over the internet, collecting key pieces of information from them and adding them to an index. 

Step 2: Indexing  

Once these pages have been crawled, the results are analysed by a unique search engine algorithm that considers hundreds of ranking factors to decide where each page should appear in the search results for any given search query. To be precise, Google has over 200 ranking factors in its algorithm. 

During this analysis, search engines look at various factors including:

• The meaning of the search query 
• Content’s relevance to the search query 
• Ranking the usefulness of pages
• Evaluates the user experience of web pages 
• Puts the search results into context for users to provide the most useful and relevant results in that particular moment 

Google provides more information on this on its how search works page.

Step 3: Search Results Provided  

When someone searches for something in the search engines, Google provides the information that’s most relevant to their search based on a huge number of different factors. If you’ve optimised your website properly and provided helpful information, your website should appear when your potential customers are browsing online. 

The importance of optimisation 

The crawling and indexing of the pages on your website might be up to Google or other search engines, but it’s up to you to help them do that. Ensuring that your website content is easy to navigate and helps to answer your customer’s questions will help them to find what they need and provide Google with the information required to rank a particular page. 

Whilst your website and content should be appealing to search engines, one of the most important factors is understanding your customers, what they’re looking for and their expectations. 

You’ll need to know more about the keywords your potential customers are using, the answers or solutions they’re looking for and the type of content they’re most likely to engage with. This may vary depending on your industry or the stage of the buyer’s journey your customers are in at a particular time. This will give you a much better chance of appearing in front of the right people at the right time. 

All search engines want to do is show their users the best and most relevant search results and provide them with the answers the need. All you have to do is provide those answers in the best way to drive traffic to your site. 

📚 Learn more about optimising your website for SEO in our blog: How to optimise content for SEO. 

How can SEO benefit your business? 

SEO is the most viable and cost-effective way to understand and reach your customers in the right place, at the right time. In contrast to paid ads which stop delivering traffic to your website as soon as you stop paying, SEO will continue to drive traffic to your website over the long-term. 

Let’s have a look at some of the key benefits SEO can provide for your business: 

• A primary source of website traffic - SEO forms a key part of the buyer funnel with many consumers starting the search for a product or service in a search engine. The way you optimise your content and website will then help to lead customers to convert or engage with your brand. 
• Low cost and effective - if you consider the results you’re likely to see over a long period of time, SEO is a low cost solution for driving traffic to your website. The main cost is the time it takes to create and optimise content. 
• Increases lead generation - when you optimise your website with the right keywords and understand what your customers are looking for and when, you will appear in the right search results and capture the interest of new customers. 
• Builds trust and authority -  following Google’s E-A-T guidelines (expertise, authority, trustworthiness) will help you to be successful in your SEO efforts. Not only will it help you to establish trust and credibility with Google, but with your customers too. 
• Understand your customers - knowing what your customers are looking for and the answers they want will help you to understand exactly what they want and how they find your business. 

💡 Want to know more about how important SEO is for business? Take a look at our blog: Why is SEO important for your business growth? 

Common SEO mistakes to avoid 

Following best practice such as creating helpful content and optimising your website for keywords related to your business, is the best way to ensure your SEO strategy is as effective as possible. 

Here are some of the most common SEO mistakes we see that you should avoid to make sure your website ranks as highly as possible: 

• Keyword stuffing: Traditionally, keyword stuffing was a highly effective way to ensure your website appeared at the top of the search results. However, Google now focuses on providing relevant content to user’s that’s easy for them to understand. So, when including keywords in your content, make sure they’re included naturally and make sense within the context of your business. 
• Poor quality content: Always go for quality over quantity when it comes to creating content for SEO. Low quality content that doesn’t offer any value to users isn’t going to be recognised by the search engines so won’t be successful in the search results. Focus on creating high-quality content that provides your readers with the answers and solutions they need. 
• Ignoring mobile optimisation: 64% of searches are now performed on mobile devices. As a result, mobile optimisation is a key ranking factor for search engines so you need to ensure your website is responsive and easy to use on a mobile device as well as a desktop. 
• Neglecting analytics: As with any digital marketing strategy, analysing the results of your efforts is essential. Check in on a weekly and monthly basis to see how your website is performing and adjust your strategy accordingly. Not doing this will mean you don’t know how your content is performing and won’t be able to make improvements. 

How do you measure SEO success? 

As we’ve already mentioned, measuring the success of your SEO efforts is essential for success. But, how do you do it and what should you be measuring? 

Key tools

There are a number of tools you can use, both free and paid, to track the results of your SEO efforts. These include: 

• Google Analytics: This free tool allows you to see the traffic that’s being driven to your website and the channels it’s being driven through. You’ll be able to see daily, weekly and monthly results to understand how many visits organic search is driving to your website. 

• Google Search Console: This is another great free tool for tracking your SEO results. Again, you’ll be able to see exactly how many visits are being driven to your website through organic search and the top queries being used to find your business in the search results. 

• SEMRush: This is a paid tool but will show you exactly how your website is ranking and the positions of the keywords most relevant to your business. If you’ve got keywords or pages that aren’t performing quite as well as you want, SEMRush will help you to identify these and make improvements. 
• AHrefs: This is a similar tool to SEMRush and will show you very similar data. 

Key metrics to track 

When you’re measuring SEO results, what should you be looking at? 

• Organic traffic: The volume of traffic being driven to your website through organic search. As your content and keyword rankings increase, this should too. 
• Bounce rate or engagement rate: Bounce rate was traditionally rhe metric to track but it is now known as the engagement rate within Google Analytics. When someone searches for something, you need to provide them with a solution. If they spend time on your website instead of bouncing straight back to the search results, this is a sign that you have provided them with the information they need. 
• Keyword rankings: Keep an eye on the keywords your website is ranking for. As you spend time optimising and creating content, these should increase. Don’t expect to go straight in for the top positions as soon as you start, it will take time to climb the results as you build authority on your website and prove your expertise. 

Key takeaways 

By optimising your website and regularly creating and publishing relevant content, you will have a better chance of being found by your target audience in the search results and ranking higher in those results. This will allow you to drive relevant and targeted traffic to your website. 

It’s important to remember that being successful with SEO is about more than just getting people to click through to your website. You also need to get them to take the desired action once they get there. 

If you’d like to find out more about how SEO can help you to drive results for your business, why not request a free digital marketing audit from our team.  

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