A Detailed Guide on Why SEO is Important

Rankings

When a potential customer is searching the internet for products or services you provide, you want to be one of the top results. Twenty five percent of people will click the first results that they see. Often Google will provide them with thousands of searches, spanning numerous pages. To gain visibility, you need to rank on the first page of SERPs. This can only be done by having an effective SEO strategy that is implemented, monitored, and updated as needed.

SEO does take time, so you cannot expect your efforts to show immediate improvements. SEO takes time and the more you focus on it and pay attention to it, the higher your rankings will climb. The good news, is that once you earn a high ranking, as long as you follow the best practices and guidelines, you can maintain a good position, offering long term results. 

Quality Traffic

As mentioned, having a website is important. You cannot expect to publish your website and it immediately starts ranking, this takes time, effort, and dedication. When your potential customers cannot find your website, you will not achieve online success. Through effective SEO techniques you can improve your ranking, driving quality traffic to your website, enabling you to convert them into customers, increasing your online sales.

User Experience

As more people use the internet to search for products, services, and information, they expect a great user experience. When you optimise your website for SEO, you automatically improve the user experience of your site. This is done by ensuring you provide relevant and unique content, you offer easy navigation, and fast loading website page.  

Credibility

Users are immediately under the impression that when they search online the first results are credible sources. This is why the top ranking websites receive the highest quality of clicks. With an effective SEO strategy, you make your way to the top of SERPs, showcasing your brand as credible and trustworthy.

Important SEO Elements

SEO is made up of numerous techniques and tactics, that are regularly updated when new algorithms are introduced. The important SEO elements include:

• On page optimisation – this is improving your website for SEO. This includes keyword research, content creation, SEO titles and meta descriptions, internal linking, and optimising images.
• Local SEO – focusing on your location to help you increase your ranking in local searches. With more people searching using mobile devices, local SEO is highly beneficial for all businesses. It includes creating a Google My Business profile, and adding local keywords to your content
• Off page optimisation – this focuses on SEO techniques carried out off your website and includes guest blogging and backlinks. Backlinks are links from reputable websites directing back to your website
• Technical SEO – the process to improve the back-door aspects of your website, including speeding up page loading times, creating XML sitemaps, providing ease of navigation with easy to understand optimised URLs and internal linking

In conclusion, it's easy to see that without SEO, your business website will be left behind. Remember, your competitors are already focusing on their SEO campaigns and reaping the rewards. An effective strategy can help you increase brand awareness, website traffic and conversions in the long run.