Why Is SEO important?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing practice that helps make your website visible on search engine results pages (SERP). It is made up of technical, on-page, and off-page components.
It involves adjusting and optimizing your website’s functionality, content, and content promotion in order to rank highly on SERP.
Ultimately, SEO practices are intended to work with search engine algorithms. Things the algorithms look for include a well functioning website, high-quality content including keywords, and high traffic and time on site.
The aspects that the algorithms look for are all very beneficial to your business and will help in converting more sales. Each element goes hand in hand. For example, the more traffic you bring to your site, the higher the SERP ranking, which in turn will drive more traffic!
Why SEO Is Important For Your Business
So why exactly is SEO important for your business? The majority of online activity, including product and service research, begins with search engines.
Queries (what is typed into search engines) are highly targeted; the user is specifically looking for information relating to that query.
Therefore it is valuable to provide relevant content if you have a product or service relating to the query.
Most searchers choose the first links on the page (excluding advertised links). In general, searchers will only click links one through five and very few get onto page two of SERP.
Therefore having an SEO strategy that places you high up on page one of SERP is very important. This placement will get you noticed and reward you with the benefits that SEO can bring.
SEO is important because it keeps the search results fair. It reduces the ability to manipulate these results as much as possible, so that the sites appearing for each search are there because they deserve to be there. Hard work and a website that appeals to visitors correlate with high search engine rankings, so if your site meets these criteria, you’ll have a better chance at showing up in the results.
No matter what your situation is, if you have a website for your company, SEO is important. Whether your business is new or old, struggling or successful, small or large, SEO is crucial to your online success. In fact, even if you are the only one in your industry, SEO is still important.
Is SEO More Important for Some Businesses Than Others?
You may be wondering if investing in your website’s SEO is really all that important. Do some businesses or industries need search engine optimization more than others?
Every website has different needs, when it comes to SEO. But it’s rarely the business or industry that determines those needs. It’s typically factors like:
- The website’s stage in the growth process
- How visitors are reacting to the website
- What keywords the business wants to rank for
- The amount of competition for those keywords
- Whether or not any SEO has been done in the past
- Whether or not the site is under any kind of Google penalty
Where the industry can have an impact is with regards to competition. If you are creating an online jewelry store and are determined to rank for the keyword “jewelry,” your SEO is going to be more costly, and more time-consuming, than SEO for a jewelry store for children targeting “fine children’s jewelry.” This is because the competition on that first keyword is much, much higher—so it will take much more work to break into the top positions.
How Can I Improve My Site’s SEO?
SEO isn’t something to feel daunted by. The most important aspects of SEO can be easy to change and modify within your site, especially when you’ve got the right tools.
Let’s go through some of the most important aspects of SEO and how you can strategize with them to improve your organic search rankings.
User Intent
The first step towards improving your SEO and gaining visibility online is understanding the intent of your users. Why are they using the search engine? What are they looking for?
User intent can be shown in a few ways, such as:
- Informational
- Transactional
- Navigational
