Is your website showing up below your competitors when you try searching for something in your industry? If so, it’s time to emerge out of the shadows of the web and make your site more visible by embracing the power of SEO. SEO, short for “search engine optimization,” has been a buzz word in the advertising and marketing community for quite some time now. And while people are generally familiar with the acronym, not many grasp an understanding of how important SEO is to the success of their website and more importantly, their business.
What is SEO and why is it important?
Search engine optimization is the process of generating more visibility and traffic to a site through organic search results. When you type a search query into a search engine, whether it be Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. you are served up results based on which sites the engine believes will have the most relevant content for your specific query. Search engines do this by crawling thousands of web pages and collecting information on each site to serve users answers to their queries and provide them with the best web experience possible.
Ideally, businesses have their websites optimized so that when users search for their content, search engines find the site with no problem and rank it highly so that users find the site easily. The user finds the information they want, and the business earns a visitor to their site. However, what our agency, The Smithee Group, sees more often than not is that most websites are not optimized for search—causing them to miss out on a myriad of opportunities to capture new site visitors. While paid search is certainly important, Search Engine Land estimates that organic search is responsible for 53% of all site traffic and 41% of all retail and eCommerce traffic respectively. This means that if your site is not proactively being optimized for search, then your business could potentially be cutting its website traffic in half.
How Can You Optimize Your Site for Search?
While fully optimizing your site for search involves some technical, back-end maneuvers, the overarching strategy of optimization boils down to one key factor: Anticipating what people are searching for and why they are searching for it.
Whether you’re a small retailer or a large brand, understanding this concept and building an organic search strategy around it can help grow your business and reach more consumers. Once you determine who your audience is and build a strategy around them, you can start to get into the nitty-gritty of SEO such as:
Keyword research
Content development
Optimizing your metadata
Competitive research
…and much more.
Making Organic a Priority
Baking in some of these SEO basics and prioritizing your site for search should be at the top of your to-do list for the upcoming quarter. Furthermore, it’s important to realize that search optimization is a never-ending marathon. As consumers change the way they search (i.e. voice search is currently more popular than ever) websites must change their optimization strategies. Evaluating and then re-evaluating your search strategies should become a monthly or even weekly habit. As there are many facets and different schools of thought when it comes to optimizing for search, one thing is certain—organic search will continue to be of the utmost importance to the success of your website and business growth.
Not Sure Where to Start?
As your website is often the first point of contact for a potential customer, a proper audit is a great way to take inventory of the content you have in place and determine what needs to be updated. Once that is complete, a more in-depth SEO audit should be conducted to analyze your metadata which includes:
Title tags
Meta descriptions
Alt-Text
Header Tags
If you need assistance with any of these undertakings, The Smithee Group will be more than happy to help. Just head on over to the Marketplace, check out the different packages we have to offer, and let’s get started making your site better than ever!