Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is a website’s primary source of traffic and is worth businesses making an investment in. For those who don’t know, SEO is a combination of non-paid strategies that help to make a website more visible to its consumers. It does this by generating organic traffic leads allowing for added opportunities to convert prospects into customers. As some marketing strategies have become out-of-date, SEO is a major and important strategy that is definitely here to stay.
Why is SEO Important?
If you a consumer in the market for a product or service, chances are you will use a search engine to find a company that can help you achieve your goals. If you are the company, surely you would like your company name to appear first on a customer’s google search but how do you make that happen? SEO is your answer.
SEO works by optimizing a company’s website to better match search information so that it will be displayed among the top of the google search results. Although you may think you can complete SEO services yourself, the reality is that you can end up doing more harm than good. Search engines closely monitor the quality and reliability of websites and if it thinks you are performing “Black Hat” SEO tactics, the search engine will penalize you for it. Hiring a professional SEO expert is always recommended.
Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO
As mentioned, black hat SEO tactics are ones to avoid completely. These types of tactics are used to fool or spam search engines and can result in websites being entirely removed from search results. These tacticsgo against guidelines from search enginesby contributing to dangerous activities and risky decisions that can lead to bankrupt businesses. Black hat tactics include keyword stuffing, meta keyword stuffing, hidden text on websites, cloaking, stealing someone else’s content, publishing bad content, link farming, and purchasing links. Black hat tactics are unethical and some can actually lead to legal issues.
On the other hand, a professional SEO expert will be able to perform white hat tactics for your company that will help to improve your search rankings on the search engine results page (SERP). White hat SEO tactics follow the best practices and acts within the search engine rules and guidelines. The main purpose of white hat tactics is to provide useful and valuable websites to customers. This includes educating, informing, or providing useful knowledge for customers to use. White hat tactics also work to find the right audience and address their needs. Effective white hat tactics include simple website navigation, fast loading times, quality content, content-relevant keywords, good titles that include keywords, and inbound links. These tactics can improve the user’s experience, create a higher visibility, and result in a higher rank.
How SEO Can Help Your Website
Making your website more discoverable and creating specific key performance indicators (KPI) can have a successful impact on your company. Your KPIs could include email signups, sales, contact forms, phone calls, etc. along with having a higher overall website ranking. Knowing what you want out of SEO is important for measuring and tracking your progress.
Having a professional hand-select the right keywords for your company can help to target specific customers and further help to differentiate your site from a sea of others that are similar. SEO can also help your website by creating organized and easy navigation for your customers. Having a good user experience enables customers to stay on the page longer, build loyalty, result in leads, and allows for repeat customers to come back. A professional SEO company can help design your webpage for these actions to take place.
SEO can also create a good online reputation for your business. As customers look around on your website and have a positive experience, they are more enabled to leave positive reviews and do business with you. This means that other potential customers who see these positive reviews will be more inclined to trust your company over competitors. An SEO designed website makes it easy for this process to take place. Happy customers can also share their positive experiences of your company through word of mouth or social media, which are both powerful means that can help to bring awareness to your company and create a broader reach of customers.
Get Your SEO Started
The results of Search Engine Optimization on your website are most definitely worth your time and investment. Consumers appreciate an easy user experience and being able to find what they are looking for. As your search ranking starts to rise, the number of online visitors will continue to grow for years to come. As you continue to update pages with new content, consumers will be engaged and proceed to come back for more.
