What is SEO and How it Can Help You Get Ahead of Your Competition

Search engine optimization (SEO) is not just a bunch of long, unmemorable strings of code; it’s a marketing strategy that helps businesses grow. The Internet has become the first port of call for most people when they want to find something online. If you don’t think your business can benefit from the broad visibility that comes with using SEO, think again. According to Statista, there are more than 4 billion searches on Google every day. That means if your business doesn’t have an effective strategy to get above your competitors and come up whenever someone searches for related services or products, you are missing out on potential sales and exposure.

What Does SEO Do?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. It’s a method of increasing the presence of your website and/or your business in the search engine results for specific keywords and phrases so that more people can discover you. The primary goal of SEO is to get more organic (free) traffic from search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. The ultimate goal of implementing an SEO strategy is to optimize your website so that it ranks higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business.

Why Is SEO Important?

A 2017 survey by Ascend2 found that two out of three business owners have or plan to implement an SEO strategy this year. Why? The same survey found that 80% of respondents believe that having a strong online presence and ranking high in search results is important for the success of their business. If this is true, then the question remains: why do businesses need SEO in the first place? When customers are looking for products or services online, they type their queries into search engines like Google. Once the search engine has found and displayed the results, it offers a list of websites that might have what the user is looking for. Using your website’s SEO to rank for these key phrases is one of the best ways to get new customers.

How Will SEO Help Your Business?

As stated above, SEO is all about leveraging the Internet to drive traffic to your website and helping your business get found by customers. The more people who visit your website, the more likely they are to become paying customers. The best part is that SEO is a long-term strategy that can generate consistent traffic over time. SEO, when done right, can also help you minimize your marketing costs. With SEO, you have the ability to grow your business with the minimum amount of effort. You don’t have to be the best salesperson — all you need to do is create great content and set up an SEO strategy to put your content in front of potential customers. The rest is up to the search engines and your customers.

Key Takeaway

SEO is an investment that will pay off in the long run. It takes time for search engine algorithms to recognize your website, index it, and rank it appropriately for relevant keywords and phrases. Once it does, you can start seeing consistent traffic. As your traffic increases, so will your sales. And if you combine your SEO strategy with a content marketing strategy, you can look forward to even greater success in the future. Now that you know what SEO is and why it’s important, you can start thinking about how you can implement an SEO strategy for your business. The first step is to identify which keywords and phrases you want to rank for. The next step is to create engaging and compelling content based on these keywords. Last but not least, you need to optimize your website so that search engines like Google know it’s the right website to show when someone types in your targeted keywords or phrases. And remember, once you’ve implemented your SEO strategy and started to see results, don’t stop there. Keep optimizing your website and improving your SEO strategy so that you can keep bringing in new customers for years to come.