What Is SEO? What is Online Marketing?
SEO is short for (Search engine optimization) and could be defined as the process of improving the position that your website appears at in the "organic" search result of Google, Bing, etc.
Why everyone wants the top spot on Google is because sites that appear higher up in the results will see more traffic to their pages, and so potentially more business. Your online SEO marketing goal is to get to page one and hopefully position one, but that will depend on what market your business is in and the competition for your business.
Before getting into spending money on SEO or other online marketing services from agencies, consult with professional about SEO. For example, if your business is spending money on SEO services to rank for mobile phones or travel, you'll be in a losing battle unless you have a budget blow money. However, if you're in a niche that doesn't have much competition than you with have a pretty good chance of ranking with proper SEO planning.
Why is SEO becoming so popular?
SEO is becoming so popular because the growth your business will see. In today's world where people of all ages and backgrounds are constantly looking at a screen, SEO and online marketing should be a necessary part of your marketing budget.
- Optimizing your business website to rank for organic search allows your products and/or services to be discovered and explored, with the opportunity for rapid growth.
So, you want SEO services for your business for the products online. Furthermore, most people use Google (or Bing) to search for things like “best food near me” or “printing store”. When people search for these kinds of queries, the goal is then to have your (relevant) website to come up on page one, and get people to actually click.
How do you do that? The answer is good SEO and online marketing!
How To Rank For Searched Terms
There are multiple SEO factors for getting your business ranked. Most professionals agree that the top 3 ranking factors that impact SEO are:
- Content
- Links
- Knowledge of Marketing
Content is an obvious factor as sites need relevant copy and entertaining articles for their users. Links are for also boosting your rank, but many factors go into getting quality links from relevant websites.
With SEO, some links can skyrocket your rankings in the SERPs. This can be tricky as links are varied from value.
Your Traffic Will Start To Increase
More often than not, we have noticed that once a site begins properly getting into SEO, both traffic to the website and conversions will drastically increase. However, this is just the begging of having SEO boost your online business.
When we are able to track and follow data on how your site reacts to different tactics, whether it is from link building or content marketing, we can then use that data and form new strategies to continue maximizing the success of SEO.
When marketing online the next act is to figure out what is working, refining the tactics that are not performing as well, and staying on top of Google’s complex Algorithm. As important, when diving deep into the data it allows us to find more customers and reach more customers who would be interested in your product or service. Also, SEO takes time so the sooner your business is able to have an online the presence the better.
Which should I do, SEO and Paid Search?
This is a debated topic for many online business owners. To truly understand which is best for your business, you have to understand the pros and cons of both.
Why Should I Use Paid Search?
So why should I use paid search advertisements for online marketing?
The best part of the paid search is the ability to target consumers when they are ready to buy versus trying to get them to buy.
So, even when money is put towards paid ads, the benefits come in multiple forms.
First, brand awareness when the ad is seen, secondly the ability to have a narrowed target rather than SEO. Whether that be through location targeting, keyword specific targeted ads, or demographic targeting consumer by age, gender, and race. There are still multiple in-depth strategies to use when targeting consumers online.
Next, the best part about paid search is the ability to set your own budget. One of the best options for online business owners is having the option to start online marketing little money (not to say it is cheap).
What Are The Cons Of Paid Search?
Well, that honestly comes down to your business, and how competitive the field you are competing for. For example, If you are targeting mobile phones and travel you will need to have a big budget for those keywords. There are few drawbacks to using Google Adwords and there is a reason multiple businesses are moving online.
Why Should I Use Organic?
With organic search, a few more factors come into play for online marketing. The benefits of ranking for SEO is having consumers find your business without really paying for ad space. Once you rank for a certain keyword or phrase, you usually hold the position for that keyword unless google's algorithm changes. Then proper optimization can fix the problem.
The downfalls are that it takes time to rank with SEO and if you're a business owner getting into SEO, know that this is a long-term benefit and not short term.
Also, having to build links with other business will take time. Overall, SEO is a very effective long-term goal.
Partaking in SEO is truly in your business best interest.
9/10 people use the internet to shop.
Just think how you often you use the internet to shop.
The number one starting point is search. Gone are the days of bookmarks and customer loyalty. Today’s consumer is in charge. They know what they’re looking for and they know how to find it.
If your company website isn’t on the first page of results it’s practically invisible. Your SEO needs a good online marketing team. Also, make sure whoever is working on your SEO is providing weekly reports. This will keep your business from paying a bad online marketing team to handle the campaign.
If you really think about how often you use the internet to shop then the perspective is easy to see. Depending on how you use the internet basically determine the age range when searching. SEO has a lot to do with the different generation conforming to the modern use of the internet.
Everything is going to be online, so business owners who don't have an online presence won't matter. The facts are out there for everyone to see and yet the majority of business still isn't even properly optimized for users.
The dramatic increase in traffic when productive companies move to online marketing is astounding. 97% of US internet users shop online. The statistics speak for themselves. With just being on the first page of Google, companies have a 70% increase in traffic.
The difference between paid traffic and organic traffic slight. Both intend to reach the customer from targeted keywords and phrase. Although, PPC campaigns can more direct and targeted to consumer wit direct intend to buy while SEO can target consumer almost ready to buy. They go hand in hand with successful campaigns.
Keyword Rich Content Will Rank Your Business
A key tool that search providers (Google, Microsoft, and Bing) use to determine a website's ranking is “spiders”. A spider a part of the software that crawls the web in a calculated, automated manner. Once a company has optimized their site for SEO, then they go over your website (and everyone's) to identify the actual written text on the page or article along with things like use of keywords and phrases.
For companies in the business of remodeling, an example of keywords or phrases would be, kitchen remodels, or bathroom remodeling contractor in San Diego. These keywords are used to determine the relevance site when he targeted keyword shows up.
With what you know about SEO and online marketing, you need to think about the search habits of your target audience and ensure the terms that your audience is searching for is seen for the pages of your website's business.
Another example, if you run a cupcake online business, your website content should include words or phrases that people may search for, like as "best cupcakes", or related phrases.
However, if you are uploaded an image with optimized text, the “spiders” will not crawl the photo, but the text below an image will appear relevant to the image.
An easy free SEO tool for online marketing to identify your keywords and the competitiveness of the keyword is the Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool.
This is designed to help prospective advertisers identify the most relevant keywords for their chosen market, but it is also very helpful when writing copy for your website.
Once you have determined the keywords, ensure that they show up in the body of your pages, also in the metadata of your page, which is the unseen data that gives the spiders key info on your page. This can be easily self-taught, with a little knowledge of HTML and access to your server, or it can be done by your web designer.
Your page rank is scored out of 10 that is given to your site based on inbound and outbound links, and helps gather is your website a trustworthy site. Linking between sites allows "link juice" to be carried through, so if your site is linked to by a site with a good PageRank, link juice will be carried forward to your site, improving your SEO ranking.
Although you won't be able to control the inbound links on your site (and Google will disapprove of link farms or purchasing links), there are some steps that can be taken to improve your PageRank score on SEO. Ensure that your site is linked to from your social media content, most notably Google+, and attempt to get listed on free open directories such as DMOZ or professional bodies associated with your market.
Both outbound and internal links are crucial for SEO. Wherever you mention a site or a source, make sure these include a reference and a hyperlink. As for internal links, meticulously linking will increase the time spent on your site by the spiders and make it easier to read for SEO. You may wish to revisit your menu structure or to insert a quick links footer, which will ensure that each page on your site has a link to all the other pages on it.
In order to determine the PageRank of your site, you can download a browser plugin such as PageRank Status for the Google Chrome browser.
Keep Your Content Updated!
The rate at which search engine spiders crawl your site will be determined by how often the content of your pages changes for SEO. With this in mind, you may want to create a monthly task to change text, images, or add or remove pages, in order to ensure that your content is regularly updated.
Alternatively, set up a blog on your site for SEO and provide updates to the blog once a week to write or start some content that is relevant to your target market. This might seem like a bit much for just setting up a website for online marketing and SEO, but understand that Google is looking for relevant a new content. Basically, set some time aside and try to make it a habit to add new and relevant content. The time invested in SEO will play in the long run.
The algorithms used by Google and Microsoft to figure out the order of their results are subject to flaws that will be improved as they attempt to deliver ever more relevant search results.
As a result, SEO is something of a moving quickly and it pays to stay up to date. That said, these basic principles are likely to remain the same and won't be changing anytime soon.
