What is SEO?
Seo stands for Search engine optimization. It is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of non paid website traffic. This exposure to your brand from search engine results is known as organic traffic.
SEO is the process of optimizing online content in a manner that makes search engines see and rank your web pages around specific keywords.
- Organic search is most often the primary source of website traffic.
- Builds trust and credibility.
- More engagement, traffic, and conversions.
- Decreases customer acquisition costs.
- Good SEO improves user experience and website usability.
- Is a long term strategy.
In order to optimize your website in search rankings you must understand what people are searching for online, what questions are they asking, the type of words they are using, the type of content they find useful. Knowing the answer to these questions will allow you to target and connect with potential customers.
Understanding your audiences intent is only half of the battle. You must also deliver the content in a way that search engine crawlers can find and understand.
What is a search engine?
Search engines are answer machines. They sort and organize billions of pieces of content and determine which content is most likely to answer your inquiry. They do all of this, discovering and cataloging by a process known as crawling and indexing. This is done ahead of time, which is why you get results so quickly when you type a question in Google.
What is an organic search result?
As I said earlier, organic search results are those that are earned through effective SEO practice, not paid for. The number of visitors who reach your site from keyword optimization is known as organic traffic.
The search engine results page often referred to as SERPs, are filled with both advertising and dynamic organic results formats (called SERP features). Some examples of SERP features are Google My locations, Q&A answer boxes, Image carousels, even twitter cards. New SERP features continue to emerge driven mainly by what people are seeking.
For example, if you search “Cleveland weather, you will see a weather forecast directly in the SERP. Try searching “Restaurants near me” and you will get a list of restaurants along with reviews and directions directly in the SERP.
Some SERP features on Google are organic and can be influenced by SEO. It is worth noting that some features even though they aren’t paid advertising, can’t be influenced by SEO. These features are populated from data sources such as IMDB or Wikipedia.
Why SEO is important?
While paid advertising, social media, and other online platforms can generate traffic to websites, the majority of online traffic is driven by search engines.
Last year, companies spent more on SEO than any other digital marketing channel. Organic search results cover more digital real estate, appear more credible to savvy searchers, and receive way more clicks than paid advertisements. For example, of all US searches, only ~2.8% of people click on paid advertisements.
In a nutshell: SEO has ~20X more traffic opportunity than PPC on both mobile and desktop.
SEO is also one of the only online marketing channels that, when set up correctly, can continue to pay dividends over time. If you provide a solid piece of content that deserves to rank for the right keywords, your traffic can snowball over time, whereas advertising needs continuous funding to send traffic to your site.
Search engines are getting smarter, but they still need our help.
Optimizing your site will help deliver better information to search engines so that your content can be properly indexed and displayed within search results.
Should I hire an SEO professional, consultant, or agency?
Depending on your bandwidth, willingness to learn, and the complexity of your website(s), you could perform some basic SEO yourself. Or, you might discover that you would prefer the help of an expert. Either way is okay!
In order for you to get the highest return on your SEO efforts, you’ll want to engage in activities highly correlated with producing results.
Adept Creative will work closely with you to examine the best search traffic for your business and for those of your closest competitors. We will then identify the best search traffic for you to target and provide a plan for owning it.
Done right organic traffic from SEO should be your company’s number one source of traffic and revenue.
Learn more about Adept Creative SEO.
