You might have heard of the abbreviation SEO before, but what actually is it and why is it important for your website?
SEO or search engine optimisation is a digital marketing tool made up of multiple elements which make your website more visible on the internet, in turn boosting your brand awareness and increasing traffic to your website.
Why is SEO so important?
The majority of website traffic is driven by search engines, by working on your websites SEO you provide information to search engines like Google allowing them to rank and display your website on their platforms. The better and more comprehensive your websites SEO the better your ranking and higher your visibility. The higher your visibility the more chance you have of being selected by your target audience. How often do you click on to page two of Google's results?
SEO not only increases your ranking on search engine results but it builds trust, credibility and gives users a better experience, search engines have learned how to recognise positive and negative user experiences and can have a detrimental effect on your websites SEO, so ensuring your website has the best SEO puts your business in a better position to gain traffic and in turn increases demand.
There are many elements of SEO which will overall affect your websites visibility, to name a few:
- Keywords: Your website should be full of keywords that are well-researched, relevant and have high search rates. For example using a mixture of short-tail, long-tail and local keywords within your websites content will help strengthen your SEO.
- Content: This is a vital aspect of SEO as its what your audience engages with, be sure to use a mixture of website content, videos, blogs, infographics and social media posts to best reach your audience.
- Local SEO: In order to attract an audience within your local area its important to use local keywords and ensure your businesses address and page is registered to platforms like Google My Business and Bing Places for Business.
- Off page SEO: This requires undertaking SEO activities away from your website, one of the main techniques for this is backlinking.
- SEM: Search engine marketing includes paid internet marketing. Although not an essential SEO tool it does help to boost your brands visibility to your target audience.
SEO is not something that can be completed overnight, it requires a lot of work and management to maintain your websites ranking. Due to the constant development and altering of search engines ranking algorithms it is essential to keep on top of your websites SEO to ensure you business doesn't decrease in ranking.
Set aside time to focus on building your websites SEO or hire a professional to give you more time focus on what's important to you, your business!
To find out more about how Responsive Web Design could help with your websites SEO, check out our website: https://www.responsivewebdesign.org/seo
