What is SEO?

Introduction.

SEO has changed significantly over the past few years. It is no longer just about keyword research and backlinks, but also about creating engaging content, using social media and boosting your website’s authority in Google’s eyes. This article will explain what SEO is and why it is so important for your business’s online presence.

SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’.

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving your website’s rankings in search engines like Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo! by using targeted content (or ‘on-page’ SEO) and off-site links (or ‘off-page’ SEO).

SEO is a form of ‘digital marketing’. Successful SEO helps potential customers find your website when they’re looking for products or services like yours. Therefore, SEO is all about driving ‘organic’ traffic instead of ‘paid’ traffic (the latter is ‘advertising’).

The goal of SEO? To get the right people to your website and hopefully engage, by downloading, something, providing their details, or buying something from you before they leave, for example.

SEO also requires technical knowledge, organisation and planning. However, our SEO platform helps with these challenges, meaning, you don’t need to know SEO and anyone on your team can do it.

Benefits of good SEO: It increases your online presence, traffic, leads and sales.

More traffic from Google.

More traffic from other search engines.

More traffic from social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.

More traffic from other websites that are linking to you or talking about you (for example, if I mention your company in a blog post on my website, then people who read the blog post will learn about your company).

SEO is closely linked to ‘Content Marketing’.

SEO takes time and effort – it’s a long-term strategy. It’s about understanding your audience and creating content that’s relevant and of value to them. It requires careful planning, keyword research and content creation.

It’s also no coincidence that SEO and content marketing are closely linked. SEO requires technical knowledge, organisation and planning because they’re both about creating and publishing information for users to consume.

In fact, if you think about it, SEO can be considered an offshoot of content marketing – a subset of its main purpose: making sure people find your website when they search related terms on Google or other search engines.

SEO is a long-term strategy.

SEO is not a quick fix that you can implement and then forget about.

SEO requires ongoing maintenance, so it’s important to establish a long-term commitment when choosing SEO within your marketing strategy.

For example, if you want to rank number one for the keyword “cheap shoes” in the city of London, it will take time and effort to achieve this goal while maintaining that ranking over time.

SEO changes often with Google’s algorithm updates.

There are two main types of Google updates. The first one is a minor update, which happens about once per month and does not usually affect your site’s rankings or performance. The second type is a major update, which happens at least once per year and can significantly affect the results in search engines.

Google updates are designed to make sure that users find what they’re looking for more quickly and easily by improving their algorithms based on feedback from users, webmasters, and content creators alike.

SEO: Where to start.

The first step in this process is an audit: a way of checking where you are now in terms of your rankings, traffic and so on, compared with competitors’ websites in order to identify areas where improvements can be made.

Alternatively, you could use our platform to generate a free SEO audit and health check.

The process will give you a valuable, free and actionable PDF report vs. one competitor. It covers keywords, on-site SEO, speed and backlinks, rating your website in each of these areas out of 100.

It takes minutes to request your personalised report and all you need are some basic details like your main country of focus and the web URL of your main competitor. We’ll then produce the report and also send you details of how to access it at a later stage.

Conclusion.

To sum up, SEO is a long-term strategy requiring an ongoing commitment, technical knowledge and planning. It is also closely linked to content marketing.

You should use it in conjunction with other digital marketing channels like social media and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to maximise your online presence, traffic, leads and sales.

The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll reap the rewards. Our free SEO audit and health check can be a good way to begin.