This blog series is intended to cover every significant facet of SEO, from identifying the terms and phrases (keywords) that can drive targeted visitors to your website, optimising your website for search engines, constructing links and promoting the distinctive worth of your website.
Even though SEO basics are simple to comprehend, it is always evolving, and even a little information can significantly impact it.
The basics of SEO
To make understanding SEO simpler, here is Mozlow’s hierarchy of SEO needs as presented in a diagram:
As you can see, establishing crawl accessibility is the first step in building a solid SEO strategy.
SEO definition
The process of optimising your web pages for search engines is known as search engine optimisation (SEO), and it aims to boost your website’s natural presence in search engine result pages (SERPs).
SEO and (paid) search engine advertising are very different. When you employ sponsored advertising, you pay search engines like Google to show your website on the search result page. In contrast, SEO increases the likelihood that your website will show up naturally on the first page of search results, leading to improved organic traffic. Organic traffic refers to the number of people who arrive at your website via these search results.
Why SEO is important
So, why should you start using SEO strategies and learning SEO fundamentals? Familiarising yourself with SEO will benefit your website visibility even more! Consider these benefits:
1. SEO generates traffic
An SEO strategy is essential for a website because substantial search engine traffic comes from organic sources. Furthermore, organic traffic is the best kind of internet traffic because it costs no money to get customers to your website. In addition, the top page of the SERPs receives 75 per cent of the clicks from users. Therefore, if your website is listed on the first page of a search, you should expect to receive the majority of clicks and traffic.
The closer your result is to the top, the more traffic it receives. According to SISTRIX, the top Google search results have a click-through rate (CTR) of 28.5 per cent. If your website doesn’t appear among the first few results, you won’t get as many visitors, leads, sales, or revenue.
2. SEO provides consistent traffic
If you have a page that ranks highly on Google, you’re likely to receive consistent traffic from that page. Unlike social media or email marketing approaches, websites that rank in the SERPs receive constant, passive organic traffic.
According to HubSpot, Google receives 8.5 billion searches every day. Consequently, you can be confident that search engine traffic will come your way as people constantly utilise the internet to find stuff. It could take some time before the SEO will start paying off, but the wait will be well worth it.
3. SEO improves user experience
Early on, SEO was simple: just add plenty of keywords to your page, and there you have it! The SERPs start to place your result higher on Google search. But can you imagine how difficult it would be to understand something if a keyword was used (stuffed) constantly after each sentence? Decidedly, it wasn’t a very good experience for people searching the keywords. Thankfully, after multiple Google updates, ranking in SERPs now takes more than just keywords.
Today, good SEO techniques go hand in hand with good user experiences. To provide consumers with the best experience possible, Google upgraded its Page Experience algorithm in 2021. Although effective SEO practises and user experience have always been intertwined, the latest upgrade encourages websites to enhance their user experience actively. Therefore, if you don’t try to offer a good customer experience, you won’t be able to rank.
4. SEO results in higher returns on investment (ROI)
Compared to other marketing strategies, SEO offers a higher return on investment. Terakeet claims that websites with high SERP positioning will enjoy:
- A boost the commercial worth of a blog by 429 per cent
- A discount in the price of acquiring new customers by 87.41 per cent
- An estimated $12.20 in earnings for every $1 invested in marketing
the second part of this blog series, we will take a look at the inner workings of SEO and how to get your website ranked higher on Google.
