What is SEO ?
SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization, it is also referred to as organic or natural search results. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of implementing key tactics on your website and off your website in order to get found online for the keywords that your ideal clients are using to search for companies like yours online.
A SEO or Search Engine Optimization campaign is designed to help you boost your rankings so that you can get to the first page of the search engine result pages when someone searches for the products or services that you offer. This helps you increase traffic to your website, increase leads, opt-ins and sales.
If you optimize your website yourself, you can essentially grow your business with only an investment of time.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vs Pay Per Click (PPC)
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is also the opposite of pay per click advertising. With SEO once you are ranked, you simply have to focus on maintaining your rankings, whereas with pay per click advertising or paid search, once your budget runs out your ads stop showing up, limiting the number of clicks that you can receive. Pay Per Click can also be very costly, making it difficult for small businesses to reach clients via search engines.
Studies have also shown that SEO or organic results gets 85% of clicks compared to only 15% for paid search. This occurs because users tend to trust the organic SEO results more than they do paid advertising, mainly because it is populated by Google’s Algorithm based on how relevant a website is to a search query entered by a user, and the authority of the site, how many links you have pointing to your website and how popular your website is.
What is SEO Comprised Off?
There are four key aspects to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to boost your rankings and increase traffic to your website. They include
Keyword Research
Knowing what keywords your target audience is using to search online for businesses like yours will help you get in front of the ideal clients. Utilizing tools such as the Google Keyword Planner Tool, you are able to determine the exact keywords that your target audience are searching for as well as how many searches each keyword receives per month. Armed with this information you will be able to go after keywords that will bring you website traffic and qualified clients.
On Page Optimization
All the steps you need to take on your website to let search engines know what searches you would like to show up for. On page optimization is the foundation of your SEO campaign and involves selecting the right keywords to optimize for that will allow you to reach your ideal clients. This is done my conducting keyword research, competitive analysis and going through a final keyword selection process. Once you have a list of keywords that you would like to optimize for, then you would take the next steps to complete the on page optimization process which includes adding the keyword in your page title, page url, content, alt tags, h1 tags, meta tags etc.
Off Page Optimization
All the steps you need to take off your website to increase your website’s authority and popularity in order to get first page rankings. Off page optimization involves building high quality inbound links to your website in order to boost your rankings and requires you to build links using directories, search engines, blogs, articles, videos, exchanging reciprocal links etc.
Technical Optimization
Ensuring your website functions properly and provides access to search engines spiders so that they can crawl and categorize your website is essential to showing up online. There are key aspects of your website that you need to ensure functions optimally. That includes, ensuring you have a mobile friendly website, ensuring your website loads quickly in browsers and ensuring that all your pages are able to get crawled and indexed by search engines.
Below is a diagram that shows you where SEO or organic search results show up compared to paid search.
I hope you now have a better understanding of what SEO is. Feel free to email me any questions. I would be happy to answer them for you.
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