If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably got a website. If you have a website, chances are you’ve heard of the term search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO.
Even if you’re completely inept when it comes to technology, you probably know how important it is for a website. If you’ve landed on this post, that’s probably the extent of what you know about SEO.
Whether you know anything about it or not, having a website that hasn’t been optimized is pretty pointless. “If you build it, they will come only works in Field of Dreams.”
But what does that mean?
Well, just because you have a website doesn’t mean it’s going to get any traffic. If you want to bring traffic from people who are interested in what you offer, you need SEO.
In this article, I’m going to explain
- What SEO is.
- What it entails.
- Discuss the benefits of SEO and some of the consequences of ignoring this important aspect of your website.
What Is SEO?
In short, SEO is a way of making your website more easily discoverable on search engines.
This involves a plethora of potential strategies. Whatever tactics you choose to use. If your SEO efforts are successful, your website will be listed higher in results people are served when they search.
Done correctly, search engine optimization can bring traffic to your website from people who are looking for what you’re offering. You can be sure they’re looking for it. For them to find you, they would have typed in a keyword related to your business.
For example, let’s say you own a sporting goods store in Vancouver. You want to bring potential customers to your website who are looking for sports equipment in Vancouver.
One tactic you could use to try to bring this audience to your website is to find a way to inject the phrase “sports equipment in Vancouver” into your website. You can do this by building a blog post around that keyword.
All going well, once you’ve done that, search engines will recognize that your post contains that keyword. When someone searches for these words, your blog will show up somewhere in those search results.
Ultimately, the goal is to show up on the first three pages of those search results, preferably the first page.
Why is this so important for Search engine optimisation?
Google, for instance, can pull up millions of search results for one query. If you can’t be found inside three pages, your website will likely be lost against competitors.
So, now that you have a better idea of what SEO is, let’s talk about what it entails.
READ: Using SEO To Inform Your Website Content Strategy
Search engine optimization (SEO) can offer a ton of benefits to anyone with a website.
Believe it or not, the benefits of SEO can go beyond just making your website more discoverable on search engines.
If you want to know how SEO can benefit other aspects of your marketing, then this article is for you.
Among other things, it explains how insight from your SEO can be used to inform your website’s content strategy. This will give you a better understanding of your target market.
What Does SEO Entail? Much of the effectiveness of SEO can be attributed to the use of keywords.
If a search engine doesn’t know what your website has to offer, how can it rank it in its results? Or serve those results to users who are actually looking for them?
As I said above, there are different tactics used to optimize websites for search engines. They go far beyond simply using the right keywords.
Here are some of the tactics can be employed for your Search Engine Optimization.
- Research your competitors Research and implement targeted keywords.
- Manually submit your site to search engines and relevant directories.
- Rewrite and revise your website content to make it the best it can be and ensure it includes relevant keywords.
- Obtain relevant inbound links and connect with relevant linking partners.
- Make sure you don’t have anything on your site that might cause it to be blacklisted by the search engines.
- Use meta tags properly and ensure that they’re page specific.
- If necessary Create accounts for the major search engine webmaster tools to monitor your website’s SEO.
- Make sure your site is properly built using compliant coding for optimal performance.
- Monitor your site rankings and freshen your content to raise your rankings even more .
Now, I know a lot of this might sound like gibberish to some of you. But it does give you an idea of everything that search engine optimization entails.
As you can tell, this is not an easy process. It’s one that may require a lot of specialized knowledge. You have two choices, spend time studying SEO or hire an expert to do the job for you.
Now that we’ve explored what SEO is and what it entails, let’s talk about the benefits of search engine optimization.
Many business owners are aware of how SEO can benefit their businesses, as is shown by a survey from Backlinko.
The survey asked 1,200 American small business owners how much they spend on SEO. The Survey found that, on average, they’re spending about $500 per month on SEO services.
So, why are business owners spending this kind of money on SEO?
Well, clearly SEO services are benefiting their businesses, otherwise, they wouldn’t be spending this kind of money on them.
The survey also found that the more businesses spent on SEO services, the more satisfied they were with those services. This also alludes to the effectiveness of SEO.
So, what does SEO do for a website?
Well, aside from just making your website more discoverable on search engines, SEO offers a range of additional benefits, including:
- Generating qualified leads and sales Making your business more prominent in your industry.
- Making consumers more aware of your business/brand.
- Positioning your business as more credible and trustworthy.
- Optimizing the experience users have when they visit your website.
- Encouraging people to stay on your website for longer periods of time.
- Supporting your other marketing efforts, such as blogging and social media marketing.
- Bringing qualified traffic to your website from people who are interested in what you’re offering.
So, now that you have a grasp of how your business can benefit from search engine optimization. Let’s wrap things up with a reminder of what can happen when you ignore SEO.
The Consequences of Ignoring SEO.
Truth be told SEO can be pretty convoluted. A big part of the reason why business owners choose to ignore SEO is that they simply don’t understand it
From their perspective, they’ve already got their website, it looks great, and it functions properly. They can’t justify forking out hundreds of dollars per month for something they don’t understand and don’t think they need.
A survey from Fractl that asked small business owners how familiar they are with SEO. The survey found that nearly a quarter of them were either vaguely familiar or not at all familiar with it. This helps to explain why so many business owners choose to ignore SEO.
If you want to know what those consequences are, they’re basically the opposite of the benefits I listed above.
Below you’ll find a list of some of the potential consequences of ignoring SEO.
- Getting fewer leads and sales.
- Being less prominent in your industry.
- Consumers will be less aware of your business/brand.
- Your business might be seen as less credible or trustworthy.
- People who visit your website will have a less satisfying experience.
- Users will spend less time on your website and will leave your site more quickly.
- Your other marketing efforts, such as blogging and social media marketing, are likely to suffer.
- The people who come to your website will be less likely to be interested in what you’re offering.
So, before you decide that you don’t need SEO for your website, take a moment to read the list of benefits above. Then compare them to this list of potential consequences.
That should tell you everything you need to know.
To your business success, Susan Friesen
If you liked the article, you might want to subscribe to the Envision Media newsletter. They publish tons of valuable content to help you learn more about marketing, and subscribing is the best way to ensure you don’t miss out. Additionally, if you’d like to learn more about building a search engine optimized website, click here for a free website guide.
Written by: Susan Friesen of Envision Media
Edited by PCGuys.
