To be successful in today’s climate, your company needs to be visible online. No matter what type of industry you operate in, it’s essential that you have an active online profile. However, having a website isn’t enough if you want to create brand awareness, attract new customers, and grow your business. In order to do this, you’ll need a sure-fire search engine optimization strategy.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization relates to your rankings on search engines, like Google or Bing. When users search for words or terms that relate to your business, you want to ensure that your webpages are amongst the first they see. Most users never look beyond the first page of Google results, so ranking highly is essential.
By using white hat SEO techniques, you can increase your rankings for specific keywords and terms. This means you can make your business more visible online. However, SEO enables you to do much more than this. A great SEO strategy doesn’t just increase your online visibility: it increases your visibility amongst people who are actively looking for your products and services.
When you employ a successful SEO strategy, you’re putting your webpages directly in front of users who are searching for related information. As these users are further down the sales funnel than random browsers, SEO can effectively boost your conversion rate, as well as increasing traffic to your website.
How Does SEO Work?
Now you know the basics of what SEO is, you’ll want to know more about how it works in practice. The field of search engine optimization has grown extensively in recent years. In fact, it’s now an entire industry all on its own. Most business owners are aware of SEO, but few have extensive experience in the field.
Due to this, learning the intricacies of effective SEO can take some time. That’s why many business owners and managers outsource their SEO needs to experienced digital marketing firms. At PWD, for example, a dedicated team of digital marketers, SEO experts, and website developers work in conjunction to deliver unique SEO strategies on behalf of their clients. Using a range of cutting-edge tools and strategies, they create, execute, and monitor bespoke SEO Perth campaigns.
Essentially, SEO works by optimizing your online content to make it search-engine friendly. Google and other search engines use hundreds of algorithms to determine how accurate, valuable, and credible content is. Every time a user searches for something, Google applies these algorithms and ranks webpages accordingly. This ensures that the most relevant, most useful, and most accurate webpages are presented to the user in response to their search query.
What Are SEO Algorithms?
So, if you want to boost your rankings and get your webpages to the front page of Google, you’ll need to satisfy Google’s algorithms, but what are they? The algorithms used by Google and other search engines are a closely guarded secret, but some of the metrics used have been made publicly available.
For example, we know that page loading speed, originality, site security, domain authority, mobile-friendliness, user experience, and link building are all critical to SEO success.
With so many different tools out there, it’s important to understand how the different types of search engine optimization can benefit your business. To learn more, take a look at how the various styles of SEO work:
1. On-Page SEO
On-page SEO refers to the technical aspects of your website that impact your rankings on search engines. Typically, any changes made to the architecture, design, or content of your website in order to boost your rankings come under the umbrella of on-page SEO. Common examples of on-page SEO include:
- Website security
- Headings and tags
- Page loading speeds
- Mobile-friendliness
- Domain authority
- Website structure
- Content (e.g. text, images, videos, etc.)
- Meta descriptions
- User experience
As you can see, there are many, many factors to consider when you’re dealing with on-page SEO. From creating original content and optimizing it with relevant keywords to ensuring your site is secure, you’ll need to use web design and development skills in conjunction with creative talents to ensure your on-page SEO is effective.
2. Off-Page SEO
What happens on your website has a major impact on your SEO rankings, but it isn’t the only thing that counts. Off-page SEO relates to the things that happen off your website that affect your search engine rankings. This includes:
- Link building
- Social media marketing
- Brand mentions
- Citations
- Online reviews
Link building is, perhaps, the most important aspect of off-page SEO, as it helps to establish your site as authoritative, credible, and trustworthy. When other reputable domains are linking to your site, for example, Google takes this is a vote of confidence. This informal endorsement can have a significant impact on your rankings, particularly when you obtain links from sites with high domain authorities.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is SEO activity that’s focused on a particular area or geographical region. Instead of targeting the keyword ‘plumber’, for example, a local SEO campaign would target the key terms ‘plumber Perth’ or ‘plumber Freemantle’.
Evidence shows that users are adding geographical qualifiers to their search queries at a staggering rate. As ‘near me’ searching has increased exponentially, SEO has developed in order to give users what they’re looking for: local information, services, products, and businesses.
However, there’s another advantage to using local SEO. If you own a plumbing firm, for example, ranking highly for the key term ‘plumber’ might seem like a good idea. However, there is going to be a lot of competition for this, which means the cost of running a successful campaign targeting this keyword will be higher.
Furthermore, general keywords, like ‘plumber’, are relevant to users from all over the world. If you’re running a plumbing firm in Perth, getting website traffic from the UK or the USA isn’t going to equate to higher conversions.
By using local SEO, however, you can target the towns, regions, and countries that your business serves. With less competition over location-based keywords, you’ll reduce your expenditure and boost your rankings more quickly. Perhaps most importantly, the people searching for location-based keywords, like ‘plumber Perth’, are actively looking for products or services in this area.
This means that you can use local SEO to promote your business within your specific operating areas. By doing so, you’ll increase traffic to your website and boost your conversion rate as you acquire new customers.
Creating Your SEO Strategy
With so many aspects to consider, it’s easy to see why business owners can feel overwhelmed when it comes to SEO. As a continually evolving area of technology, you’ll need to ensure that you’re familiar with the latest algorithms, tools, and trends if you want to succeed. This means you’ll need to dedicate a significant amount of your time and resources to search engine optimization if you want to manage your SEO in-house.
Fortunately, you don’t have to be responsible for creating, implementing, and tracking your own SEO campaigns. With expert assistance from experienced SEO personnel, you can access the specialist services you need to optimize your site, elevate your rankings, and increase your company’s online visibility.