Welcome to the digital age, where everything you could ever want to know can be found at the touch of a button. Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo are a wonderful tool, not just for satisfying our curiosities, but also more strategically, marketing a business. Most businesses today already have a website to showcase their products or services, and these businesses have a business advertising gold mine sitting in the palm of their hand. Websites when used tactically can increase the amount of traffic a business receives, simply by being smart with content featured on the pages. At Advantage Media Group we specialise in SEO services and website design, with a goal to increase your search engine rank. Search Engine Optimisation is bursting with acronyms, so hopefully by the end of this post, they will all make more sense, and you will have a good understanding of what SEO is.
SEO Definition
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a marketing technique designed to increase a webpage’s visibility through search engine results. SEO is an organic form of promotion where visibility comes from free, raw content and not from direct, paid listings. SEO focuses on capturing the searchers intent, with ‘Keywords’ and semantic algortihms using websites and website content. Consumers should recognise that search engine results are produced by complicated algorithms, therefore SEO aims to persuade these search engines’ that one website deserves a higher listing than another.
Difference between SEO and SEM?
You’ll often see SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) together in the same sentence. This is because SEO is part of SEM. SEO aims to increase rankings organically whereas SEM includes other paid means to increase online traffic. Paid listings can appear instantaneously, but organic search listings take some time to rank on google. SEO is all about boosting the ranking power of a page, long-term.
What Does SEO involve?
In 2018, the meaning of SEO has vastly expanded over that of 10 years ago. Consequently, The required skill set of online marketers is also more demanding. The relationship between the algorithms that Search Engines put in place, and the content being served is becoming more complex. The focus is continuously shifting to provide searchers with quality, tailored content as opposed to content with the greatest keyword count. Some basic ranking factors in 2018, (not in any particular order) include:
- Mobile Responsiveness – Google can tell if your website adjusts properly to fit mobile devices
- Website Speed – How fast does your website load on mobile and desktop versions
- Content – Quality over quantity. Keywords are still very much considered, but they must be used naturally.
- Linking – Back-linking, citations, internal links. In the most basic sense, the more quality links pointing to and from your website, the better.
- Listing consistency – A Business’s listings must be consistent and accurate. E.g. Name, Address, Phone (NAP)
Impressions and Conversions
The role of an SEO provider is typically to boost your business or website within the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). When a result is visible on the searchers page, this is called an impression. An impression is the first step, and is a success as far as SEO is concerned. Some online marketing providers would stop here to say: “hey, you’re appearing as the first result on Google – our job is done” – they’ll then move onto other keywords, other locations and/or focus on maintaining that position. We believe that, as great as this is, is only half the battle. Impressions don’t provide inherent value to your business – that’s what conversions are for. A conversion can be described as a user taking an action that aligns with your goals. This may be a simple visit to your website (if you’re an informational website), a form submission, phone call. If your website is an eCommerce (online shop) website, then a conversion is generally the purchase of a product. Sometimes, quite often actually, this won’t actually happen on the first visit. Conversion optimisation is the process designed to track and increase the occurrence of these value giving actions. Website Snippets, Metadata, Call To Actions (CTA) and Above the Fold are just some of the items considered in conversion optimisation. What this means is that there is a very evident blend of the marketing and website design worlds.
SEO is an incredible tool if utilised to its full extent. If you are interested in a quality online marketing service and learning more about what SEO could do for your business, please don’t hesitate to get in contact us.
