How important is SEO for us?
A professional way to garner the attention of your prospective customers, who are searching for the products and services related to your business is termed as “SEO”. To put it simply, it is the quality control for websites.
The specific purpose of every business i.e. to increase visibility to their target audience is professional work executed by “Search Engine Optimization”.
In order to stand apart from your competitors, you need to know about the psychology of using SEO. Why do you even need to care about this? Is it that important?
We all know that the internet world is available at our fingertips! You are just a click away to know about what you are looking for. Whether it is to know about any product or service or even to look for any information, everyone goes online.
But what if I tell you that there are many search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, which use web crawlers to answer your query? But are these search results organic?
This is where SEO works its magic and gives you more credibility.
How Does SEO Work?
Google search engines are your instant answer machines. These, with the help of algorithms, analyze pages in the index, exhibiting you the arrangement of pages in accordance with the ranking order, that you are looking for.
Here, search engines may look like a smarter way to deal with your search queries. However, this is when SEO provides the help. This gives you an advantage over paid search ads, which unfortunately require payment by you.
Does this sound confusing? Let’s look at the various categories that constitute the functions of SEO-:
ON-Page SEO:
If you are looking to optimize your web page content in order to rank it higher in the search engines, then On-Page SEO is your perfect partner. This SEO practice includes optimizing the content of your page along with your Title Tags and URL.
- Content-
“Good Quality Content is king to deriving traffic”, a rightly said one liner. If you look from the perspective of SEO, then good content is the one that is always there to supply every demand, no matter how small or large it is.
Secondly, as per SEO definition, good content must be linkable, making it easier for the search engines to rank it.
- Title Tags-
Another most important factor to consider is the title of your web page. If you want your 90% title to display properly, then you must keep it within 60 characters only.
These Title tags are basically the first impression that describes your page. Such tags are likely to appear in three places — a) Web Browser, b) Social Network and c) SERP’s ( Search engine results page).
Don’t forget that even if your site ranks higher, your title tag can be the make-or-break factor.
Some other things to consider to keep a perfect title tag is-
- Try to keep it under 60 characters only.
- Try to avoid “ALL CAPS” titles to keep it readable.
- Try to avoid repetitive use of keywords.
- Try to create data-driven unique titles.
- Try to make it valuable for your customers.
- Urls-
In order to replace the IP address used by your computer, URLs make it human-readable to easily communicate with servers. URLs is your web address that specifies the exact location of your website on the internet.
Just like title tags, you need to keep a character limit for URLs too, which must not exceed 2083 characters.
How can your customers access the URL? The answer is simply- via the link of your website, which will indicate what the destination page will be about.
Although, URL is considered to be a minor factor while determining the ranking of your page, the keywords used in this can have a major impact on your site’s visibility.
OFF-Page SEO
If you are looking to rank your site on Google and increase its visibility, then you need to go beyond your own site. This simply signals you to execute the activities, away from your website to get a higher rank in the search engines.
Off-Page SEO is often related to Link building, but this story involves further more aspects such as content marketing, brand building, social media, and many more.
To keep it precise, if you write a guest post for some other blog, then you are doing something, apart from your own site. This is known as Off-Page SEO.
Link building is one of the topmost criteria to meet the higher ranks, however, this is not the only factor.
Some other Off Page techniques to consider to achieve that ranking is-
- Forums
- Influencer Marketing
- Podcasts
- Reviews
- Events
And many more…
Now you know the functions and benefits of SEO for your site’s visibility, the story doesn’t end here.
Do you know how to perform it practically? Or will you hire someone professional to do this for you?
Well, let’s find out…
Should I Hire an SEO consultant or agency?
Before you make the decision about whether to hire an SEO consultant or not, you must ask yourself the following questions-
Who were their present and past clients?
How will this consultant increase my ranking visibility?
Whether he strictly abides by Google’s webmaster practices?
Will he keep me updated regarding the changes on my website?
If you get your answers to these questions, you can definitely decide about hiring an expert.
Now that you’ve decided, you must know what all SEO services will be provided to you. These include-
Website Optimization:
When you have no option left to enhance the visibility of your website, you need to have an expert’s guidance. Before proceeding, your SEO specialist will execute an analysis of your site’s current SEO strategy.
Furthermore, he will help in organizing the hierarchy of your website and create an effective SEO campaign.
Keyword Research Plan:
For growing the visibility of a website, keywords have their own importance that cannot be ignored. With the help of a keyword research plan, you will get the hang of all those appropriate keywords, which can improve your ranking.
The strategy is carried out for both vertical and long tailed keywords that can target high profitability and low competition.
You may be thinking that this is your right decision. Well, you are right in this.
Besides these, we cannot miss out some other important SEO services such as-:
- Execution of Website Audit.
- Analyzing the online content.
- Updating best SEO practices.
- Improvements in the CTA’s
- Page Speed Optimization
- Creating responsive designs.
And so on…The list doesn’t end here…
Now you know how important it is to have a professional working for you, taking off your burden, and contributing to the growth of your business.
Furthermore, as you know, SEO is a subset of Digital Marketing. There is not much difference between both these terms, they are not synonyms.
Then, how are they different? Let’s find out..
Differences Between SEO and Digital Marketing
- SEO, being one of the tools of Digital Marketing, helps to make the site appear in the highest positions, with the help of crawlers like Google. This is an unpaid way of improving the site’s ranking.
On the other hand, Digital marketing, with the help of the PPC method, derive the traffic on the website. Therefore, this is a paid method.
- Another difference between SEO and Digital Marketing is in terms of finance. To clarify more, in SEO, which helps in increasing your site’s ranking, does not involve any expenses. The only expense that is to be incurred is the amount payable to SEO specialists, hired on a monthly basis.
In Digital Marketing, the whole budget depends upon the company’s budget. But, if it gets depleted, then simultaneously advertising will stop too, leading to loss of traffic.
Conclusion
We have discussed some of the core components and the importance of SEO. It is a combination of many complex techniques and tactics. Even though new technologies emerge, and search engines change their algorithms, SEO will still have its own utmost importance in every business.
