An Intro to SEO and Why Your Business Needs It
Whether your business is launching a new brand or looking to increase its established market share, search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to your business marketing strategy.
With the power to increase brand visibility—and consequently, recognition and trust—SEO implementation can be the difference between successful market capture and stagnation.
Why SEO is essential for your business
When you perform an online search, the search engine displays results according to its database of indexed pages. Content ranked more relevant to a search term—and the visitor who used it—shows higher up in the search results. Low-quality content has a poor ranking and is buried under many search results pages, where statistics tell us virtually no one clicks through or isn’t shown at all.
Search engine optimization is a collection of techniques that influences how search engines index your content. One of the techniques includes strategically written page titles and meta descriptions that highlight the relevance to users and search engines. Meta descriptions are displayed as snippets in search results. How you word them can mean the difference between a click and a skip.
For a website to be found by potential customers and achieve high rankings in a competitive industry, it must abide by certain content and technical principles used by algorithms to search, index and rank your site. In addition, because the algorithms change over time, regularly optimizing your website maintains better visibility.
People come first, even in SEO
It’s important to note that the many optimization techniques are designed to make your website more attractive to algorithms. However, changing algorithms are not your target audience. People are. All the content on your website should, first and foremost, appeal to your users and guide them through your sales funnel.
User experience
For search engines like Google, user experience remains one of the biggest determinants of website quality. As such, how easy your site is to navigate is a major ranking factor. When structuring your website, how visitors will interact with it must be considered. There should be clear menus and quick links to the most valuable information visitors look for. Internal and external links to and from high-value sites support this goal. It is also important to conduct regular website maintenance. By fixing broken backlinks, addressing 404 errors and making sure your site remains as user-friendly as possible, you help maintain a good ranking.
Quality content
Content is another measure of website quality. Is the writing and other content on your website unique, engaging and regularly updated?
By including helpful resources, such as well-written and cleverly designed articles, FAQs, videos, infographics and white papers, your website content guides visitors through your sales funnel, promotes your brand as a knowledge base and encourages brand trust. The longer a visitor stays on your site, the more valuable your content. In turn, this data informs search engines that your site is a quality content source, which increases SEO ranking and generates more traffic. As a bonus, you now have valuable content to share on social media—an important aspect of any off-site SEO strategy.
Using data as a benchmark for success
Achieving a top ranking doesn’t happen overnight, and brands have to monitor their progress long-term. Marketers use several tools to gather data to determine the effectiveness of your optimization strategy. We look at data such as visitor engagement, behaviour and conversions to measure how people arrive at your website, what they’re looking at and which pages and campaigns perform best, combining these with a host of other useful metrics to paint a picture of your business success.
Search engine marketing will help grow your business
A few adjustments to your SEO strategy by the team of Mindspin experts will set your business on the path to growth. Getting started is easy. Be prepared to delve into your current SEO during your initial consultation. Think about your business goals and how SEO can help:
1. What is your current search engine page rank? Where would you like to be in two months, six months, a year?
2. How is your existing content meeting your customer expectations? Are you maximizing its potential with multi-channel sharing?
3. Is your website inviting? Do your visitors stay and explore your site, or do they bounce?
4. What data are you currently tracking, and what burning question do you have about your customers that analytics can answer?
We’ll walk you through these challenging questions and take the steps needed to get the answers for you. With the potential to increase sales leads, revenue, and visibility, SEO has the critical power to transform your brand. So book your consultation and start the transformation.
