What is SEO and Why is it Important?
To increase search engine result page rankings and maximize website visibility, many companies turn to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With the increasing amount of websites there are on the Internet, and the sheer magnitude of information available on the internet, having a website with an SEO strategy is almost a necessity today. For the uninitiated, SEO may seem like a complex and technical form of marketing… and it is. This article stands to introduce you to it in general terms.
What is SEO?
SEO is the practice of improving your website’s search engine rankings organically. By “organically”, we mean that your high ranking is achieved not through paid advertisements, but rather through creating relevant and authoritative content. The more relevant and authoritative your content is, the more it answers the questions of those searching for answers. This leads to a higher rank for your website.
In order to achieve this, keyword terms must be targeted and techniques need to be implemented on and off of your website. Here’s a helpful video that takes you through the basics:
Why is SEO important?
With over 1 billion websites on the Internet today, you must have an SEO strategy implemented on your site to attract visitors and increase traffic. Without optimizing your site for Google, your website will merely float about in the abyss and likely not be found.
Websites that don’t use SEO best practices run the risk of being ignored outright by search engines, which makes it much harder to be seen. If your business is online, it would be nearly impossible to acquire visitors unless they are directly searching for your business.
Even if you don’t operate solely on the Internet and your site isn’t optimized, that’s still a massive audience that you can’t tap into since they can’t find you. Your content may be the best information out there for your customer’s needs, but it means nothing if your site doesn’t adhere to the rules that SEO has put in place to make sure that the most relative, authoritative sites are the highest ranking in the search engine results.
The Value of SEO and How It Works
It is a bit of a climb to gain a high ranking on the search engines, but once there the investment pays off tremendously. Potential customers who are looking for your services but haven’t decided on who to hire will find you before your competition. It’s an extremely powerful position to be in and it yields results. Yes, SEO takes time, and yes it is an investment over time. You likely won’t have your website on the first page of search engines overnight. Search engines have a very particular process they go through in order to trust your website and it can take some time to establish your site as reputable.
Once you pass that threshold, however, search engines start to expedite the process of indexing your content and that’s when the strategy pays off. You’ll see your site rankings naturally improve as you continue using SEO methodology.
As your ranking steadily increases, you will notice an increase in organic traffic. This is the ultimate goal for Search Engine Optimization. It is an essential tool in making sure you gain that audience and then take the measures necessary to captivate and retain that audience.
Creating great, optimized content focused around keywords that your audience uses to find companies like yours is going to be the foundation of how well you attract and engage your visitors. That being said, SEO is much more than just picking a keyword and plugging it into your website in an attempt for it show up in search engine results.
Conclusion
For SEO to be effective, it’s imperative all aspects of your website are received well by search engines. That includes the content associated with pictures, upload consistency, writing style and link sharing. Search engines are starting to take social channels into account as well which have their own set of rules. Because of this, Bush Marketing recognizes it’s important to make sure your SEO is done right and done well, which is why it’s one of our services that we offer. Read more about it here and learn how you can start applying SEO strategies to your site today.
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