Why is SEO Important?
SEO is a term we bandy around every day, but why is it so important? Well, essentially, without SEO your website would sit, alone, invisible and unvisited, less of a resource and more of a drain on resource. Not an ideal state of affairs when you need it to work hard driving high quality traffic, converting customers and leads and bringing in revenue.
We use SEO as a bit of a blanket term to cover a variety of disciplines. They all have something in common though because they are all designed to make your website more effective at converting. Be it ecommerce sales, B2C enquiries or B2B leads, that is the aim, to make websites more effective selling tools.
What Is SEO?
There are a wide variety of disciplines that come under the SEO banner, some more than others. However, the disciplines that we feel are key to future proofing your website, especially in light of Google’s focus on the visitor experience, include on-page SEO, Technical SEO, Content Marketing, CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) and UX (User Experience).
On-page SEO
On-page SEO is essentially the work implemented to improve elements of the website that you can see on the page. It covers content, images, the way your content is arranged and presented. Off page SEO refers to a range of factors that impact the visibility of your site and focuses on links from other sites to your pages that signal trust, authority and popularity.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to all the activities undertaken away from your website to improve your rankings and visibility organically. Link building is commonly known for being the go-to off-page SEO tactic, however, there are other practices which are important for off-page optimisation. Off-page factors are brand mentions, social networking, bookmarking, guest posting, guest blogs, videos, and link building. Enhancing your off-page SEO is key to optimising your website and creating a firmer digital footprint.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to elements of your site health such as crawlability, page speed, interactivity, mobile usability, link integrity and security, though these are just a few examples. Technical site health is essential to effective performance, though technical health cannot deliver results without the other elements of SEO equally aligned, no site that has poor technical health will see effective results either.
Content Marketing
The research and development of an effective content marketing strategy, ensures that you are creating and sharing content on your site that is tailored specifically for your target audience. Understanding your target audience(s) and their specific needs means you can effectively deliver content that responds to those needs, engages them and drives them towards conversion.
Content isn’t solely for your audience though, well not directly anyway. Your content is also the way to help search engines better understand the purpose of your pages and to rank them. Great content means that search engines see the purpose of the page, the value it adds and the problems it solves and so it ranks higher in SERPs for relevant searches. So, great content adds value in a number of ways and not only on your website but via social media and biddable media too.
Quality content and usability is essential for ranking well within the digital marketplace and understanding your audience and their search habits are a must. People want to find relevant and valuable content when looking for a product, service, or information through a search query. Creating informative content for your business, and the topics that surround it as essential for ranking well in Google.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation)
CRO is the art of optimising website pages, and the user journey through them, to encourage conversion. Be it a form fill, a purchase or a registration, whatever the goal, CRO removes and reduces friction, enhances the journey and removes obstacles to the conversion. CRO also looks at converting those visitors that have not stayed on your site, through lead nurture, remarketing and other techniques to maximise the value of every site visitor.
UX (User Experience)
User Experience is closely linked to CRO in that both disciplines are designed to convert website traffic into customers, or at least into high quality MQLs (marketing qualified leads). However, UX is a broader discipline encompassing the design of your website and its usability, information architecture, how easy the interface is to use and how frictionless the various user journeys are from landing through to conversion. Enhancing your UX might include incorporating an element of conversational marketing with a chat bot or live chat. Equally you might consider automation to manage workflows that nurture users towards conversion, even after they have interacted with you.
What Is Happening In Digital Marketing?
Search Generative Experience is a new feature to be aware about, as well as a future without third-party cookies.
Using best practice SEO, elements of which we have outlined above, is the most effective way to futureproof your site against the impact that evolutions in search could have on it.
Ensuring that your site is healthy, offers the content your users are looking for, as well as an attractive, easy to access solution to their problems are all ways to align with what search engines are looking for, whilst simultaneously engaging with your audiences effectively.
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