What is SEO in Digital Marketing? Why is it important for your business?

By Jayasty

We see a steady rise in everything going online. Eventually, you might want to get on board and have decided to set up your website. Or have decided to revive your existing website. One of the ways to get people to your website is with SEO. This article will explain all about what is SEO and why it is important for your business. So, let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What is SEO and why is it important?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility when people search for products or services in Google, Bing, and other search engines because organic search is the most prominent way for people to discover content online.

SEO focuses on improving the ranking in the non-paid search results. SEO should be part of your marketing efforts if you have a website and want to get more traffic—the better visibility of your pages in search results, the more likely to attract prospects to your business.

The most important thing to remember is that there is no shortcut in SEO. It would be best if you did things in the right way to stand out from other competitors. Expect to devote atleast six months to see the results.

People conduct trillions of searches every year, often with commercial intent to find information about products or services. Search is often the primary traffic source for brands and complements other marketing channels. Higher visibility in search results than your competition can have a material impact on your bottom line. To sum it up, SEO is the foundation of a holistic marketing ecosystem, and it helps to get:

Quality of Organic Traffic – You get high-quality traffic that includes visitors who are genuinely interested in your products/services or other resources that your site offers.
Quantity of Organic Traffic – The more high-quality visitors you attract to your website, the more likely you will see an increase in valuable conversions. Thus, having the right SEO strategy can help you rank relevant pages on top results in search engines.

How does SEO work?

Search engines such as Google and Bing use bots to crawl web pages, collect information about those pages, and put them in an index. Think of an index as a library where you can pull up a book (or a webpage) to help you find what exactly you are looking for at that time.

Next, algorithms analyze pages in the index, considering hundreds of ranking factors to determine the order of pages that should appear in the search results. The search algorithms are designed to surface relevant, authoritative pages and provide users with an effective search experience. Optimizing your website and content for these factors can help your page rank higher in the search results.

Types of SEO

SEO is one of the most effective digital marketing tactics you can invest time on. There are mainly six types of SEO that you can take advantage of.

On-Page SEO

It is the process of optimizing the content on your website. On-Page SEO deals with the page and how to make it friendlier to search engines and users. This includes the meta title, meta descriptions, images, headers, body copy, and more.

While search engines look at a website, ranking is performed at the page level. That is why it is important to pay attention to each page on your website.

Some On-Page SEO tactics include:

Keyword research – Determine the terms and phrases you want to rank for. Do some keyword research, find which keywords have high relevance, search volume and consider terms with less competition. Once you have determined the keywords, write content around them to optimize the page.
Optimize metadata – Make sure your meta titles and meta descriptions include relevant content and keyword phrases to have a better chance to rank higher. Metadata informs Google and other searchers about the content of the page.
Interlinking – Internal linking links to other pages in your website. Insert links on keywords and link to high-authority pages to help Google and other search engines read your site and make it more user-friendly.

Off-Page SEO

This is pretty much everything that does not happen on your website. Off-Page SEO is all about creating exposure and trust for your company, which results in more visitors and sales. It is mostly focused on link building (it is the process of getting other high authority websites to link back to your website).

Some Off-Page SEO tactics include:

Guest Post – Many blogs and publications accept and publish posts that you pitch to them. Make sure your site is relevant to the content you are pitching and include a link back to your company.
Competitor research – Find out where your competitors are acquiring backlinks from. Check out the backlink profile of your largest competitors to target those sites to get a backlink for yourself.

Make sure your acquired links are earned from authoritative sites, bring qualified traffic, are follow links, and are from relevant sites.

Technical SEO

As the name implies, it focuses on the technical parameters that affect the visibility of a website in search engines. The main goal of technical SEO is to ensure that search engine crawlers can crawl and index a website without any issue.

Some technical SEO tactics include:

Site structure – Use HTTPS hypertext, user-friendly URL, easy navigation hierarchy, and consistent internal links to ensure concise site structure.
Mobile-friendliness – Many users move from desktop to mobile devices to perform searches for products or services. Check your site on a mobile device to ensure that it is user-friendly.
Speed of website – The faster website is always better and hence ensure that your template is simple and optimize your visuals.

Local SEO

It is the variation of SEO that focuses on a specific area rather than the national focus. It is suited for local business only, and it is all about increasing your online visibility to local customers. Some tactics for local SEO include:

Optimize Google My Business
Ensure your name, address, and phone number are consistent online
Optimize online directories and citations
Add location to your website

YouTube SEO

It is the process of optimizing your YouTube videos to increase their ranking on YouTube. It is the practice of optimizing your channel’s page, metadata, descriptions, and videos. You can also optimize your videos for other search engines where users can come across your videos on Google, Bing, etc. It focuses on the number of viewers that your video has reached.

Some tactics for YouTube SEO include:

Conduct keyword research
Use a good video title
Add tags to the video
Write good descriptions
Create transcriptions and captions for videos
Create videos longer than 2 mins

Mobile SEO

It is a subset of SEO specific for mobile devices. More than 60% of Google searches are performed on mobile devices these days, and this is a huge number and a good sign that the internet is moving from traditional desktop to mobile devices.

Some tactics for mobile SEO include:

Improve your site’s load time – When users search for information online, they want immediate access to it. If your website doesn’t load fast, they will leave your page. Hence it would help improve your site’s load time to keep your users on your mobile site.
Have a responsive design – Responsive design adapts to any device a user uses. Whether a smartphone or tablet, your audience will get the best experience.
Optimize title and meta descriptions – These two elements determine whether someone clicks on your listing on search results. Title tags serve as a preview of your page. A good title tag utilizes your keywords and should be descriptive. It should inform your audience what they will find on your page. The meta description provides additional information about the page.

Conclusion: –

SEO is the most powerful digital marketing strategy, and an optimized website has higher visibility in the search engine and improves user experience. If you want to stay on top, update your content regularly and create fresh content to refresh your site.

Let me know in the comments below if this article helped you understand the basics of SEO and how will you start implementing it in your website?