Have you ever thought about why some websites always pop up when you punch in a particular word related to your search? For example, you probably wish to take a class or workshop in learning a foreign language or to play an instrument or for yoga and you simply type in the related search. Voila, several links show up immediately on the front page. There would be many others on the following pages, but some select ones would always feature on the first page. Why so? It’s all because of strong SEO techniques that these businesses apply to get their services and get featured on the front page. Read on to know more about SEO and why it’s so important for businesses today.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is popularly and commonly referred to is simply improving a website’s visibility for relevant searches given. It’s not just visibility, but SEO raises a website’s or shall we say, businesses’ quantity and quality of traffic. SEO helps a business rank high on any search engine in their unpaid segment. And these searches are always organic or natural since they are unpaid.
Simply put, SEO is the process that helps to optimize a website’s online content. Hence, it ends up being at the top of the searches of a specific keyword on any search engine.
Simplifying it further…
SEO involves all unpaid traffic, which means, it includes, image, video, news, academic, or any other specific search.
It optimizes a website for any search engine that the business would want a high ranking for, be it Bing, Google, YouTube, or any other.
The search engine must view the website to be the best result for a particular search given.
An algorithm decides whether the website is the best based on its relevance to the search, authority of account, loading speed, etc.
Primary aims of SEO
There are two main ones –
- SEO helps a business understand what users search for online to create high-quality content that meets and satisfies their requirement.
- Applying SEO is useful for businesses to create their website that various search engines can discover, index and also comprehend the content.
Besides these two, other important goals of SEO are –
- To identify what people are looking for that relates to the services or products of a particular business
- To create content that users are happy and satisfied with
- Use SEO techniques to send the right signals to algorithms and search engine crawlers.
Stages of SEO
SEO is an ever-strengthened process but gets broadly divided into three types –
Technical SEO – It simply means that the website or business owner needs to configure settings in a way that simplifies the job of search engine crawlers. Once done correctly, this need not revisited unless issues crop up with indexing and crawling that can affect the rankings negatively.
On-site or on-page SEO – It refers to creating search engine-friendly content. Search engines look for signals to distinguish a page, hence keywords, website structure, headings, images, interlinks, almost everything that focuses on the website should send the right signals.
Off-site or off-page SEO – This applies to promote the website to rank it higher in the searches given. It involves activities that take place outside the business owner’s website. Often considered as ‘link building’, it includes content marketing, social media, citation building, brand building; basically, all activities that take place outside the main website.
Benefits of SEO
Better User experience – A good and strong SEO enhances the user experience. It communicates clearly to the user about the products or services offered by the business on their website. Search engines can get that information and convey it to the users.
Increases brand visibility – When a search is given for any service or product, users mostly pick from the top five that appear on the search engine. A strong SEO ensures the website ranks higher garnering more visibility and pulling in more people to click on the website and also convert them.
Increases web traffic – SEO is one of the biggest ways to increase online traffic to a website thus offering excellent inbound sales opportunities. Since SEO increases organic traffic, it also increases the number of visitors to a particular website daily. Hence, there’s a direct connection to sales as more relevant users visit the website.
Builds trust and credibility – A good SEO score means a higher appearance on search engines, which means increased visibility. This also means gaining trust and appearing more credible to existing and even potential users as they naturally turn to recommendations shown by popular search engines. A higher position for keywords searched builds on the trust of users for the product or service offered.
Attracts local users – SEO also helps in garnering local customers; local business listings and specific geographical searches are the basis of a local search. Small and medium-sized businesses with strong SEO can optimize their websites for a specific location. Having accurate local information available for users would also get websites excellent reviews by them thus attracting more local customers.
Using SEO is quite important today for any business to generate leads, maintain regular users and add more than well. Creaa Designs, a Mumbai-based web designing company, applies excellent SEO techniques to offer its customers the very best ensuring great visibility and conversion rates of users.
