Surely you’ve heard about SEO and its importance for your website. There’s been a lot of talk lately about this and that you need it to grow your online business, but few say why you should.
That’s why we’re going to tell you everything, explain what it is and some reasons to implement a digital marketing strategy on your website.
What is SEO?
SEO comes from the acronym for Search Engine Optimization, that is, search engine optimization. It consists of implementing various digital marketing strategies to improve the visibility of a website in search engines, that is, placing it on certain keywords and making it appear at the top of the search engine.
That way, when a user searches for keywords on a search engine like Google, the best web pages optimized for the search engine will appear in the first few results. It differs from search engine marketing in the search for organic results, that is, the web page remains in the top positions without the need to implement paid advertising campaigns.
The Most Important Factors
To determine which result a website will rank in the search engine, there are several SEO factors. We will keep the three most important, which cannot be missing from your strategy:
- Content and Keywords: Content is king in this industry and is essential for the web to determine its position. Search engines value content that is useful and tailored to a user’s search objective. Experts don’t just write, they perform keyword research with the help of powerful tools to find out what users are looking for. This content is strategically organized into an article that responds to the search intent.
- Website Performance and User Experience: Today, you need a well-designed, mobile-friendly website with good loading speed. Users will leave your site if it doesn’t load quickly, something that will affect your SEO. To verify this, search engines like Google rely on artificial intelligence algorithms, which calculate factors such as time spent, bounce rate, or click-through rate. Factors like web design, image compression, caching, etc. come into play here.
- Authority: So far we have seen on-page factors, i.e. they depend on the page itself. It’s also important to highlight off-page factors that depend on another site. Search engines rank a website with a certain authority based on external links from other pages pointing to it. With good content and experience, natural links can be created if the user shares them. Of course, a link building strategy is often needed to increase site authority by placing links back to the page on relevant sites.
Why Should You Implement an SEO Strategy on Your Website?
Once you know the basics of search engine optimization, you might be wondering if it really helps. The answer is yes, today, with all companies having an online presence, developing a good strategy is almost mandatory. In fact, we will see 4 advantages that having a good position gives you.
Increase Traffic by Doing Search Engine Optimization
The main objective of optimization strategies is to increase website traffic. Thanks to them, search engines will know that your business exists and customers and users will find it easily. For example, if you have a shoe store in Madrid, you can attack the keyword “shoe store in Madrid” and its derivatives, so that users search for it.
If well optimized, the search engine will know how to make content appear more often in front of the right people. The job of the digital marketing specialist will be to define this search intent and adapt the content to it.
Higher Return on Investment (ROI)
Doing SEO costs money, but the money comes back quickly. In fact, it is the digital marketing strategy that brings the highest return, being more profitable than search marketing or paid social media marketing strategies.
Of course, we must keep in mind that returns are generally long-term. A lot of content takes time to position itself, in addition to the fact that new content must be created and existing content adapted (content curation) to stay ahead of the competition. Of course, if you are patient, you will recoup your investment and make money.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Improves User Experience
We discussed earlier that optimization has several related factors, one of which is user experience. A well-designed website not only ranks faster, it also helps your page users feel comfortable when browsing.
In this way, you are adding value to potential customers. The truth is, it’s nice to find the information you were looking for quickly and on a website that loads quickly, works well on mobile phones and is easy to use.
More Brand Authority and Competitive Advantage
The last advantage that SEO offers is that it improves your brand image. A well positioned website will give your brand more credibility, which will be associated with prestige. This will allow you to get more customers and sell products at higher prices. In the same way, a good strategy aims to solve the consumer’s problems and, thus, increase even more their credibility and image.
All this gives a huge competitive advantage. In the end, people get impatient and always click on the first results, without going to the second page. So, if you manage to be in the top spots, you will get more traffic, gain market share and outperform the competition.