Having a solid SEO strategy is paramount in modern business. We live in a digital-focused world where people constantly search the web for goods and services relevant to their needs. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or what you offer potential customers. To succeed in business today, you need a great website and even better SEO!

SEO makes your website more visible to the masses, putting your business in front of people that matter. It gives you more opportunities to convert prospects into customers, playing a big part in your success story.

Let’s examine what SEO is and why it’s critical in today’s online business landscape.

What Is SEO? (Search Engine Optimization)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about optimizing a website to improve its ranking on search engines like Google. It’s a process that involves improving a site’s structure, creating relevant content that matters to your target audience, boosting technical aspects to enhance performance and more.

Popular search engines like Google crawl websites, index them and use that information to provide the best results to users. That’s the ultimate goal of a search engine, and SEO helps you fine-tune your site to ensure it’s as relevant to users as possible. By optimizing your site to what search engines look for, you can appear higher on the rankings page for greater visibility.

Many factors influence how sites appear on search engine result pages (SERPs). These can include elements like:

• Domain Authority
• Content Quality
• Site Performance
• Mobile Friendliness
• Content Freshness
• Backlinks
• Keyword Relevancy

Contrary to popular belief, SEO is not an exact science. The results you can get are quantifiable, but there’s no switch to flip! Every strategy is different. Furthermore, search algorithms evolve, and every website is unique. That’s why RankScience custom-builds SEO strategies for every website.

What Are the Benefits?

SEO is a type of holistic digital marketing. Unlike more traditional forms of marketing like pay-per-click ads or email campaigns, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Developing and implementing SEO strategies takes time, but the work is worth it.

There are many benefits to gain from having a great SEO strategy. The biggest is more visibility.

Did you know that Google performs approximately 100,000 searches every second? Or that estimates say that more than three-quarters of users never go beyond the first page of a result page?

Your ranking on search engines matters! People use search engines to find information about products and services, and many will stumble upon companies they want to support. SEO can help you become more visible to high-quality leads who are already searching for content related to your business. Appearing high on SERPs is a fantastic way to build organic traffic to your site, which can ultimately translate to more conversions and a steady boost to your bottom line.

The beauty of SEO is that it’s about the long game. In addition to helping you in the short term, maintaining good SEO practices can lead to continued growth that pushes your businesses to new levels of success.

How Does It Work?

Adopting better SEO strategies is a multifaceted process. Typically, it begins with an audit of your site. Knowing where your website stands now will help you identify areas that need improvement.

One of the biggest elements of SEO is producing high-quality content. However, there are three main components of good SEO. They include:

• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Technical SEO

On-page SEO refers to everything on your website that directly impacts your rankings. Improving on-page SEO involves generating high-quality content potential visitors care about, optimizing images, improving title tags, adding internal links to keep visitors around, etc.

Off-page SEO includes actions that impact your ranking outside your website. That includes building backlinks, getting guest contributors, marketing your content, growing your social media presence and more.

Finally, technical SEO revolves around your site’s performance. It’s about optimizing your site’s crawlability and indexability, improving its structure, boosting its performance and ensuring it’s mobile-friendly.

SEO strategies involve a mix of on-page, off-page and technical SEO activities. Improvements to those three facets can significantly affect how search engines present your site to users.

Why SEO Is Crucial for Your Website

Visibility is vital for any business. But getting your company name in front of more people goes beyond basic ads, especially in the modern digital age. SEO is an invaluable tool to help you build the traffic your company needs to grow and succeed.

Here are a few of the biggest reasons why online businesses need SEO.

Grow brand awareness

Developing great brand awareness is often a far-reaching goal for businesses. It’s one thing to make your website and online presence easy to find. But as you build brand awareness, people will become more familiar with what your business offers.

SEO can help you get there.

As your website appears on more and more search engine results pages, you’ll start to build more awareness. Even if users aren’t clicking on your link right away, that visibility makes a difference. Your website’s placement puts your brand name at the forefront of whatever keywords relate to your business. As your rankings climb, so does overall brand awareness, turning your company into a heavy hitter for your niche or industry.

Drive more organic traffic

Organic traffic refers to users visiting your website via unpaid search engine results. It’s typically the most valuable type of traffic you can get because it leaves the biggest impact. Pay-per-click ads can generate some traffic. But you’d have to spend considerably more to reach the heights that organic traffic can bring.

Prioritizing SEO allows you to build organic traffic numbers over time, and it’s a self-feeding mechanism. Investing in SEO aims to help your site appear higher up on result pages. But your organic search traffic can grow even more as your placement improves!

Increase conversions

Your website likely plays an important role in your business operations. Whether you sell products or not, your site provides valuable information to potential customers. It can encourage them to reach out, fill out lead forms and more.

Great SEO can pave the way to substantially better conversion rates. Remember: The entire goal of SEO is to make your site as search engine-friendly as possible. To do that, you must provide relevant content and information search engine users need.

Ranking high on result pages allows you to reach high-quality leads, pushing them through your sales funnel and eventually converting them to customers or clients.

Increase sales

Every business wants to get more sales. But those improvements hinge on visibility. If no one visits your website, you can’t convert them to paying customers.

There are clear correlations between organic search traffic and increased sales rates. People need to know about what you offer to support your business, and SEO is a fantastic way to bring them in while boosting your bottom line.

Outrank your competitors

Who doesn’t love to beat out the competition? Finding your biggest online rivals is easy. All you have to do is a quick search!

Understanding what the competition does empowers you to beat them. Great SEO can put you above the pack while leaving challengers in the dust. From local competitors trying to attract customers in your area to larger businesses vying for the attention of an international audience, a fantastic SEO strategy can help you beat them all.

Getting Started with SEO

Getting started with SEO isn’t as complicated as it seems. The first step is to analyze your website and perform in-depth keyword research to understand what people use to find you. See what sites outrank yours and see what they’re doing differently.

From there, you can develop a strategy for your site and business. Prioritize technical aspects of your site to create a great user experience. Then, create amazing content, improve on-page SEO and take steps to make positive changes for off-page SEO.

Learn More with RankScience

Ready to take your site’s SEO to the next level? Develop winning strategies with RankScience. We understand that your business and website are one of a kind. So, our teams custom-build every strategy to generate real results. We have over a decade of experience in SEO and online marketing, and we combine AI technology with proven techniques to provide you with results that count.

Contact us today to kick your SEO into gear and experience the growth your business deserves!