What Is SEO And Why Is It Important?

Leveraging effective marketing strategies is one of the best ways you can make your business stand out in what is currently an extremely competitive marketplace. For most businesses, getting your website to rank better in organic search results pages is a key component of this strategy – this is where SEO can have a significant impact!

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation is the ongoing process of improving your website’s appearance, functionality and performance so that it ranks well in organic search engine results pages (SERPs). In this context, the term ‘organic’ refers to unpaid listings generated by Google based on its ranking factor algorithms.

What this means for business, in real-world terms, is getting your website up on Google’s first page of search results. If your business is on page one of Google SERPs, it is naturally more likely to be clicked on by searchers. The more click-throughs (plus the level of engagement and the longer the stay) on your website, the more Google is convinced your website must have been helpful to its searchers – which in turn results in even better rankings – and ultimately greater potential for increased revenue!

What Are The Top 3 Benefits Of SEO?

A good SEO strategy provides businesses with ongoing support and structure with the view to keeping your business ranking well in Google search results pages over the long term. Here are the top 3 main benefits of SEO.

1. Sustainable Growth. The main benefit of SEO is that it leads to more sustainable business growth over the longer term (in comparison to paid ad campaigns, which stop driving traffic once the spending stops).
2. Increased Customer Engagement. Having your web pages appear higher in the unpaid search results for key terms related to your business means significantly increased potential for new and existing customer engagement (leads and conversions).
3. Enhanced User Experience. Optimisation influences what your content looks like when shown within SERPs (more on this below) and also its appearance and behaviour when searchers click through to your website (improving the all-important user experience).

What Is Search Engine Optimisation Used For?

The simple fact is – the more visible your online presence, the better your chances of being found by potential customers! Google has to sort through billions and billions of web pages and other content to try to pick out what it thinks might be most beneficial to its searchers – all in a fraction of a second. Search engine optimisation is simply the process of helping Google choose you!

Why is SEO important? It is quite rare for searchers to venture beyond page one of Google’s search results to find an answer to their query these days, which means if you rank on page 4, or 5, or 10 you are not going to be seen at all. SEO helps you rank better improving the chances of reaching your potential customers.

If you look at it from Google’s perspective as a business unit, you will see that they are just trying to provide the best possible customer service too! Their focus is on bringing useful results that answer questions efficiently and with the correct intent. This leads to happy users, which means continued use of the Google platform and a successful business model for Google. So, SEO could be viewed simply as helping Google to help you!

SERP Features Impacted By SEO

What does ranking on page 1 look like? Google provides various ways for your business to appear in its SERPs, featured listings can appear in any of the following ways:

• Search results website listings (traditional unpaid listings)
• Local pack results (“Places”)
• Google Business Profiles
• Knowledge panels (appearing on the right-hand side of screen)
• Additional site links (appearing under your main website listing, links to additional pages within your website)
• Featured snippets (summaries pulled from content on relevant web pages linking to the information’s original source)
• Image packs and image carousels, video packs (visual links displayed at the top of the page)
• ‘People Also Ask’ (summary and links to further queries that relate to the original query)
• Related searches (links to related search terms prompting users to expand their query to access related information)

Search Engine Optimisation Basics

Search Engine Optimisation can be broken down into three focus areas that work together to help Google better understand your business, ensuring it can match your content with the perceived intent of its searchers (which in turn enhances your chances of achieving higher and broader-reaching rankings).

On-Page SEO

On-page optimisation refers to ensuring the specific display elements of a web page are relevant, clear, and consistent. On-page SEO is important because it focuses on satisfying Google’s number one ranking factor – quality content, while also aiding in improving page and user experience (also top ranking factors). On-page SEO strategies include optimising:

• Textual content of each page (building quality content)
• Domain names, page URLs and page titles
• Headers, alt text and metadata
• Images and videos (sourcing, resizing and compression)
• Navigational aspects, including internal linking and sitemaps
• Keyword targeting
• Geographical location targeting (Local SEO)

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is the process of building website authority, trustworthiness and reputation. This one is all about convincing Google you are a business that exists in the real world, an authority on your industry subject, and that you are able to offer reliable and trustworthy advice to satisfy Google searchers. Off-page SEO techniques include:

• Social Media Marketing
• Google Business Profile optimisation (reviews, Local SEO)
• Link building from quality third-party websites
• Managing NAP consistency (including harmful backlink removal)
• More traditional marketing techniques including podcasts/vlogs, newsletters, email marketing, press releases and building relationships with influencers and industry experts.

Off-page SEO techniques work by building a wider online presence and generating an engagement/sales funnel back to your website (increasing traffic).

Technical SEO

The technical aspect of SEO is primarily concerned with managing the more practical back-end aspects of your website. This includes ensuring all elements are functioning correctly and search engines can effectively crawl and index your site information to understand its content correctly. Some of the more common aspects of technical SEO include the ongoing management of:

• Site crawling, indexing, robots.txt status and canonicalisation issues
• Internal linking design and management (navigation elements, links between pages, broken links) – pages should be readily accessible (three clicks or less).
• Coding (including CSS and JavaScript minimisation and optimisation)
• Mobile responsiveness (user experience)
• Page load speed optimisation (user experience)
• Structured schema markup (affects how your website is displayed in SERPs)
• Analytics/metrics monitoring/reflection

SEO vs SEM vs SMM – What’s The Difference?

What is the difference between SEO, SEM and SMM, and how do they work together to form a comprehensive marketing strategy? Let’s take a quick look below.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

As we have discussed above in-depth, SEO is the process of optimising your website to enhance ranking performance in organic search results pages. When using the term ‘organic’ we are referring to the unpaid website listings and features we see when searching for answers using the Google Search platform (listings generated by Google based on its ranking factors).

SEM – Search Engine Marketing

Technically speaking, Search Engine Marketing encompasses both SEO and paid advertising as both are used to promote a website on search engine results pages, but for clarity, we will refer to SEM as pay-per-click (PPC) ads as this is the most common distinction. PPC advertising can play a crucial role in lead and traffic generation for businesses of all types and sizes. It forms a valuable part of a broader marketing strategy, enabling companies to reach a wider audience more rapidly.

What Does SEM/PPC Advertising Look Like?

• Paid Ads. The process of creating, publishing, and monitoring paid ads on Google’s Advertising platform. Paid ads appear at the top of SERPs when meeting certain keyword requirements (often displayed as a ‘sponsored’ listing). The benefit of paid ads is that they provide immediate visibility for potential customers capturing their attention and encouraging them to take the desired action.
• Keyword Targeting. Building a comprehensive list of specific keywords and phrases commonly used in search queries to reach the relevant audiences. This means businesses are better able to get their ads to appear in front of the right people by bidding on the appropriate keywords.
• Budgeting And Bidding: PPC campaigns involve setting budgets and bidding on ad-optimal placements to ensure a maximum return on investment (ideally active lead generation and conversion).
• Monitoring And Reporting. The key to a good paid ad campaign is to monitor performance. This includes overall ad performance metrics such as cost per click, click-through rates, engagement rates, conversions and many more, as well as reporting back to clients on how their ads are performing.

SMM – Social Media Marketing

A crucial component of any digital marketing strategy, SMM refers to the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and Instagram to create social networks and share information with the view to building a company’s brand awareness, increasing sales, and driving website traffic.

Utilising both paid and unpaid approaches, SMM provides a valuable additional resource for engaging with new and existing customers while also gaining insight into engagement success using purpose-built data analytics (which aids in identifying more productive ways to increase engagement).

Combining SEO, SEM, and SMM creates a powerful online marketing strategy that drives traffic, generates leads, and increases conversions. See here for more information on SEO vs SEM marketing and which is right for you, or delve into some helpful tips on developing a comprehensive SEO strategy here.

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