The Internet is a fierce and competitive field in which everyone wants their website to stand out among the millions of sites that exist out there; after all, more visitors to your website equals more sales, right?
However, having a presence on the Internet is not enough to guarantee the success of your site, online store or blog, since to achieve a good place in the results of user searches, it’s necessary to develop a specific strategy to optimize your site in order to achieve this goal.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the strategy you need to make your website appear in relevant searches by offering useful and interesting content for people who are looking for the products or services you sell. The perfect strategy!
However, doing SEO requires study and patience, since this is a complex subject with a good variety of technical terms, strategies, and practices, all necessary so that Google can “see” your site as suitable to appear in the top positions in its search ranking.
But don’t let that anxiety take you!
Whether you’re taking your first steps in the world of SEO, you want to expand your knowledge on the subject or you already have a website and want to improve your positioning in Google, in this super guide on SEO, you’ll learn everything you need to know about the subject. Are you ready?
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization consists of a series of optimization techniques and strategies that are applied to the pages of a website or blog to improve its positioning in Internet search engines, mainly in Google, since this is the most used in the world.
Ultimately, SEO is a digital marketing strategy to make your business stand out by gaining visibility on the Internet and therefore, more leads, customers, and sales.
This is achieved by optimizing web pages through the use of certain techniques that help improve their “attractiveness,” so that Google positions the aforementioned pages in the top positions of its search results.
Take into account that about 90% of Internet users who search on Google are only interested in the results that appear on the first page of the search engine.
This means that the main objective of doing SEO is to increase the volume of organic traffic to your web pages. In this sense, it should be noted that Google ranks web pages, not websites.
Although there are hundreds or even thousands of factors that influence to improve the positioning of a web page, there are two basic factors that are fundamental:
- Authority – Or what is the same, the popularity of a web page. The more valuable the information a web page contains, the more popular it will be. This is factor number one, as it takes into account user experience.
- Relevance – This is the relationship that a page has to a certain search. It’s not simply that a page contains the searched word or phrase, but also that many other on-site factors are taken into account.
What are the types of SEO that exist today?
Although there are actually several types of SEO, we can classify it into two main groups:
On-site
This takes care of relevance. To do this, try to optimize the web page in such a way that the search engine understands its content. Here we can in turn include the following elements:
- Keyword optimization
- Loading time
- User experience
- Code optimization
- URL format
Off-site
This focuses on factors external to the website. In this case, the most important factors are:
- Number and quality of links
- Presence in social networks
- Mentions in local media
- Brand authority
- Click-through rate (CTR)
What is local SEO?
In this case, the search engine tries to provide a satisfactory result for a user searching for solutions to his problems in a certain region. For this, Google uses its local search algorithm, which prioritizes results in the region where the user is located.
For example, if you type “hotels”, “hotels near me” or something similar, Google will take your location into account when presenting the search results.
Don’t confuse SEO with SEM
This is a topic that causes some confusion, even among beginning professionals in the world of digital marketing, since although both terms are related to each other, each one refers to different actions.
SEO takes care of “organic positioning.” Or what is the same, “non-paid.”
SEM focuses on “paid positioning.” That is, those strategies that include the use of paid ads.
An SEM strategy is based on creating advertising campaigns, so that when a user performs a search, your website appears in the first results in the form of an advertisement.
TIP
A good and comprehensive digital marketing strategy should take both methods into account to get the best results.
Why does your website need search engine optimization?
Okay, now that you have a much clearer understanding of what SEO is, it’s time to get into the real stuff of this guide: Why is SEO important? OK, you already know, but only superficially. Let’s get deeper into this matter.
The main reason to do SEO is because it makes your website more useful to both users and search engines. SEO is necessary to help search engines understand whether or not a web page is useful to users. Let’s see it better with an example:
Let’s think for a moment that you have an online store dedicated to selling shoes. Well, for the term “party shoes” there are about 100 million results. Among these results, those that appear in the first three places are those that obtain the most clicks from users.
Now, in terms of paid advertising, how much would it cost to always appear in the first search results?
If it is a business oriented to several countries, taking into account that every hour 1.4 billion searches are carried out in the world and that of those searches, about 75% of the clicks are on the second page of results, we could talk about thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising.
SEO is the most profitable and useful way for users to find your website through Internet searches.
But these are only superficial answers to the question why your website needs search engine optimization?
Let’s see now what are the other advantages of using SEO.
You increase the visibility of your brand
Imagine the following scenario: you have a business that sells refrigerators. User X is having trouble with his fridge, so he tries to find information on Google on how to fix it.
If you have a good tutorial on Google on how to repair refrigerators step by step, you’re already earning a visit to your website for free.
Although the tutorial doesn’t talk about sales, this is the way to establish an initial relationship of users with your brand — sales will come later.
You attract qualified organic traffic
If you offer quality content on your website, you’ll attract many users who are looking for solutions to their problems.
Remember that the more visits your website receives, the more people will know about it and the more likely you’ll be to make a sale.
You increase your chances of sales
In many cases, users who want to know how to repair a refrigerator could end up needing a new one. If these users already know your brand thanks to your useful articles, it’s very likely that the first business that comes to mind is yours. And this is where the sales process begins.
Your brand gains authority
By gaining better positions in search engines thanks to SEO, you get any user looking for information about refrigerators to go to your website as the first option.
In the case of Google, it looks favorably on the content published by people who are accredited experts in a particular subject, which is why it gives better positions to these web pages compared to others.
In this sense, a website with medical content will get a better ranking by having articles written or supervised by doctors, as long as their professional authority can be verified in some way.
You surpass your competition
If your brand is the one that produces the best content on the Internet on a particular topic, users will look for your brand, since it is the one that’s most trustful to them.
It’s true that implementing a B2B SEO strategy to achieve this takes time, but it’s a long-term strategy that in the end, will provide the most profitable results for your business.
Better return on investment
Continuing with the previous point, an SEO strategy requires a much smaller investment compared to paid advertising.
Some of the elements in which it’s necessary to invest to implement an SEO strategy would be:
- Agency project management software
- Salary for SEO specialist
- Domain and hosting of your website
Consider that if the content created is of enough quality, it’s only created once, and then it continues to generate returns on investment for a long time, with a minimum of maintenance.
Strategy: Optimize your website
What do you need to do to create and implement a successful SEO strategy? Read this!
Set your goals
Please, answer the question: What do I want for my website?
- Get more organic traffic
- Generate more leads
- Increase sales
- Reduce advertising expenses
- Increase my brand authority
This is important so that you can better monitor your strategy using the most appropriate indicators for each case, in addition to giving you greater security that you are on the right track.
Define your target customer
Who do you want to reach with your content? You must build your ideal customer from data collected in various ways; that is, create your “buyer persona.”
A buyer persona is a model that allows you to define the communication style, content, and distribution channels more effectively.
Use SEO tools
To carry out a good SEO strategy you must make use of some diagnostic, planning, optimization ,and monitoring tools.
Some of the best tools for this are:
- Google analytics
- Google Search Console
- SEMrush
- Ahrefs
- MOZ
Search for the best keywords
The missing link between your content and your users are keywords; that is, the terms that users type in their search engine to find the solution to their problems.
To find the best keywords you can:
- Use tools like SEMRush or Google’s Keyword Planner.
- Then you determine if their search volume is relevant and useful to your content, based on your objectives.
- Next, you create a list with the keywords that may be most useful and add them to your content.
- And finally, create, organize, and publish your content.
Content Marketing is King
You must always be very clear that SEO is directly related to content. Even if you have content optimized for SEO, it will be of no use in the long run if the first one is of poor quality.
On the other hand, if your content is of very good quality, even without having a good SEO, they can provide you with good results in the long term.
So, the best thing is to have content of the best possible quality; content that adds value, is useful, and solves problems.
Another aspect that can also help you a lot to create quality content is storytelling. This technique can help you communicate your message much better and reach your buyer persona more easily.
If you add some good SEO optimization practices to this, you’ll be able to give your website that little boost it needs to position itself in the first Google results.
Conclusions
Today, SEO is essential for any website, more in some cases than in others, but all types of Internet businesses can certainly benefit from this marketing technique.
Remember that if you want search engines to better understand your website and give it higher rankings, you must prepare your content in the proper way.
If you focus your efforts in the right way, you can generate more traffic to your website, blog or online store, attract more customers, and make more sales.
Remember also that if you combine SEO with other digital marketing or inbound marketing strategies, you can get even better results.
A medium and long-term investment that, if done correctly, will give you the best return on your investment.
