SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving your site’s visibility in search engine results. This can be done by optimizing the content of your website and improving the way search engines perceive it. If you want to increase your business’ revenue and grow your client base, SEO is a powerful tool you can use.
In this guide, we review the aspects of What is The Purpose Of Doing Seo For Startup Businesses, how to be good at seo, why seo matters, and what is the meaning of seo in digital marketing.
What is The Purpose Of Doing Seo For Startup Businesses
SEO is the process of optimizing your website to be found in search engines. It’s a strategy that can be used by any business, and it allows you to gain an edge over your competitors. But what exactly is the purpose of doing SEO for startup businesses? Here are some benefits:
It boosts your online visibility
- You want to be found on search engines.
- You want to be found by more people.
- You want to be found by more qualified people.
- You want to be found by people who are interested in what you have to offer.
It attracts more traffic to your website
Let’s face it: the main goal of any business is to attract more customers, right? In order to do this, you need traffic. And what better way to attract that traffic than through SEO?
SEO helps you get more traffic from search engines, social media and other websites, email marketing campaigns and even word-of-mouth advertising. The more people find your website online (and trust us, they will), the better chance you have of generating sales leads or closing clients.
It helps you stand out
The second reason is that it helps you stand out from the crowd.
When there are thousands of websites in your niche, you need to make sure that your business gets noticed. This is what search engine optimization does for you. It helps you gain a competitive advantage over other businesses in your niche which allows you to be unique and stand out from all of them
It allows you to have a competitive advantage
Having a competitive advantage is what allows you to stand out from the crowd. Your customers will know that you’re the one who can solve their problems and provide them with what they need.
There are several ways to find a competitive advantage:
- Ask yourself, “What do I do better than anyone else?” If you answer this question honestly, then it may become clear where your competitive edge lies. For example, if you have access to more resources or connections than other businesses in your industry, then this could be something that sets you apart from everyone else. A competitive advantage can also come from being more skilled or knowledgeable about something specific; maybe it’s more effective at providing customer service due to its positive reputation within its target market; or perhaps its founders have extensive experience in the industry and make good decisions based on that knowledge base.
It improves user experience
- It improves user experience
SEO is a way to make your website user-friendly. A lot of people think that SEO only helps you rank higher in Google, but this isn’t the case. SEO actually helps users find what they are looking for and navigate through your website easily, improving the overall user experience.
To be able to achieve business success, you need SEO.
If you are looking to build a successful business, then you will need SEO. It is an important part of any business and it can help you gain a competitive advantage over your competitors. It is not a one-time thing but rather something that has to be done on a consistent basis if you want to see the benefits.
If done correctly, content marketing can have an impact on the sales performance of your company. You will not only increase awareness about the products or services that you offer but also improve customer loyalty by providing them with relevant information about their needs.
how to be good at seo
Why don’t planes crash more often from mechanical failure? With all the moving parts inside a plane, it seems that something would break fairly easily. So, why doesn’t that happen? One primary reason: checklists.
Before pilots push the button for taxiing and take-off, they perform an extensive pre-flight checklist to make sure everything is functioning exactly as it should be.
Entrepreneurs hoping for strong SEO (search engine optimization) rankings might take a lesson here. They can create a checklist of their own to make sure everything is perfect for their next website article. No, an SEO checklist won’t protect you from crashing and burning. But it will help ensure that your post has the best chance it needs to rank high in Google.
So, before you publish your next piece of web content, run it through the following 9-point checklist for the best SEO tips.
1. Pick a good keyword to focus on.
The first step is to simply pick the search term or phrase you want the post to show up for. If I am writing about the best dog toys for small dogs, I’ll want to find out what people are actually searching for.
The easiest way to do this is use Google Keyword Planner, a free tool that will show you an estimate for any search phrase. (Although Keyword Planner is free, you may need to set up an AdWords account to gain access.)
For example, I noticed that “small dog toys” receives 590 monthly searches — higher than any other related combination of words. However, I’m still not totally ready to start writing about this topic. First, I need to do some research.
2. Research the competition.
Now that I have a term I want to try to rank for, I’m going to go undercover and do some recon!
Jump over to your “private browsing” mode on your web browser (“Incognito” in Chrome, “Private” in Safari and Firefox, “InPrivate” on Internet Explorer) and head to Google.com. (At my company, we do “private mode” because we don’t want Google to use our past search history to influence what we see on the search results page.)
Take a look at all the content on page one of Google, ignoring any ad results at the top. The 10 (or so) results are your competition! What are they missing? Can you do better?
3. Write the best content.
Now that you know what your competition looks like, it’s time to create the content that is going to blow those folks out of the water. This is perhaps the most difficult part, but it’s the most important. It needs to be amazing.
I don’t care if you are creating a blog post, ecommerce store page or sales-landing page. It needs to be better than the rest, or else neither Google nor your audience will ever take note.
For an example of an article I recently wrote — with just this goal in mind — check out “How to Become a Millionaire: The Ultimate Guide.”. My goal with that post was to write superb content about that topic. How did I do?
4. Put the keyword in your page title.
This should be a no-brainer, but I’ll say it anyway: Your page title should contain your keyword, but that doesn’t mean it has to be exact (though it can be).
Additionally, the title must also be interesting enough that people will actually want to click on it! A good example of this would be PT from PTMoney.com, who wrote a great post about “making extra money.” However, rather than a boring title, like “Make Extra Money,” he titled it “52 Ways to Make Extra Money.” Now that is something I would want to read.
5. Put the keyword in your header.
You can organize most webpages by having a large title at the top, followed by several sub-headers throughout the page (like the sub-headers in this post).
This organization is helpful not only for people in skimming blog-post articles, it’s helpful in showing Google exactly what your blog post is about. Therefore, be sure to use your exact keyword phrase at least once in your sub-headers.
6. Put the keyword in the name and alt-tag of your image.
Next, if your blog post contains images, you can use those images to cement the idea to Google about your post’s topic. There are two ways to do this:
To change the image name, simply change the name of the image on your computer before uploading. Instead of a file called “2831274.jpg,” you can re-name it something like “small dog toys 1.jpg.”
The “alt tag” is something you designate after you upload the photo to your website. Without getting too technical, the alt tag is simply the text that the web browser will show if the photo can’t load for some reason.
7. Use the keyword in the URL and in the post.
Another way Google is able to determine what your blog post is about is the URL. In other words, we’re talking about what comes after the “.com” in your url (or .net, .org, or whatever you use). For example, which of the following URLs do you think Google will like better when deciding whether or not to show a certain page?
You’re right if you guessed the second one. While the former might not completely kill your SEO efforts, the latter definitely helps show Google exactly what the post is about.
8. Insert internal links.
If you aren’t talking about your best content, why should anyone else care? For this reason, it’s important that your best SEO content be linked to internally by other pages on your website.
Yes, this means you may need to go back and edit some older posts to include links to the new, incredible content.
9. The most-important SEO tip: Get external links.
Okay, finally we’re finally at the big one: external links.
External links are links from websites other than your own. Google relies heavily on external links to determine how good a post is. And this makes sense, doesn’t it? You can talk about yourself and your own skills all day long, but no one will believe you. But as soon as other people begin bragging about you, others take notice.
While producing incredible content may get you some links, the truth is, you are going to have to do some “link building.” This means reaching out to other website owners in the space to ask for links. For some great tips on getting these links, I like to read Backlinko.com.
Related: Companies Will Spend $65 Billion on SEO in 2016, Much of it Will Be Wasted
The above nine-point checklist may not include everything a person could know about SEO, but by simply following this checklist, you’ll be miles ahead of the competition and will likely see your posts get significant SEO traffic.
why seo matters
SEO is complicated, but the idea itself is simple. SEO stands for search engine optimization: Optimizing your website for search engines. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? The complicated part is in actually doing it. That’s because the rules seem to change almost daily and you probably don’t know what all the rules are to begin with. If you’ve ever searched for SEO best practices before, you pulled up approximately 19 million results with SEO-related titles such as:
It’s maddening, and it makes SEO seem like a battle that you can’t possibly win. But you can win it. In this post, we’re going to keep things simple and offer you a gentle introduction into the basic tenets of SEO. By the end of this post, you should have a solid understanding of what SEO is, why it matters, and what you need to do to get found by prospective clients.
Why Does SEO Matter?
Let’s start with a little trivia: In 1997, there were approximately 1 million websites in existence. In 1998, the amount doubled to 2.4 million. By 2000, there were 17 million websites. Now, 20 years later, there are almost two billion websites in existence.
Every time someone goes to Google or Bing to initiate a search, that person can potentially reach a billion websites (and exponentially more web pages).
My point is that the Internet, like the Universe, is huge and ever-expanding. SEO is important because without it, you’ll be flung to the outer portions of the Internet Universe where no one will ever reach you. Sure, your website might be indexed by the search engines, but if your target audience never sees your site, does it really exist?
SEO makes sure that your target audience finds your website in a relevant search.
If you want people to find you online, it’s not enough to set up a website and go “online.” You also need to make sure of the following:
Let’s break down what this means.
Search Engines Trust You
Search engines have been hurt before by unscrupulous marketers who found a way to trick search engines into displaying their websites.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the terms “white hat SEO” or “black hat SEO”. Black hat SEO refers to the use of scammy techniques of gaming the system. For example, burying unrelated keywords somewhere in the body of your website. The result? The searcher is looking for one thing and ends up on a site about something else entirely, i.e. landing on a website about bed linens when searching for elephants of Africa.
Or, in another example of black hat SEO, stuffing your website with the same phrase over and over again to show that your website is about a certain topic. You may be doing it to secure a higher ranking but the result is a negative visitor experience on your website.
Black hat SEO is all about influencing search engines, often at the cost of alienating your actual visitors.
White hat SEO, on the other hand, is the technique of appealing to humans instead of search engines. Google, Bing, and all major search engines recommend that you take this approach when creating content for your site.
Search engines have actually gotten smarter over the years. Let’s use Google as an example. With each new update, Google gets more sophisticated. Not only does Google understand more of the intent behind a search query, it also understands what websites are most likely to provide a satisfactory answer to the user’s query. This is why certain websites get promoted and others don’t.
While no one knows all of the ingredients in Google’s secret sauce, we know that if website content is made for your user, it will rank well. Google is all about the user experience and making sure searchers find the best possible answer to their query as quickly and friction-less as possible. So it’s best to keep things human friendly; not search engine friendly. You can do that by making sure to include the basic elements that Google looks for in high quality sites, for example:
Create Content That Attracts Your Target Audience
What I’m about to say may shock some of you: Search engines don’t really care about website owners or creators. Each major search engine company is focused on providing its users with the best answer to their query.
If search engines were to return mediocre results to users’ queries, then their users would get frustrated, lose trust in that search engine, and eventually leave for another (better) search engine.
Now that you know the search engine company’s motivation, your task is to create content that satisfies the user’s query. Think about all of the potential questions your prospective customer may have. To do this correctly, you’ll need to map out the buyer’s journey, from awareness to consideration to customer to referral source.
If you run a mattress store, your buyer’s journey may look like this:
Ideally, you’ll create content for each milestone along the buyer’s journey. Each milestone may have several pieces of content, each pushing the buyer to the next logical step in the journey.
Use Keywords That Match Search Queries
A barebones website with your company name, address, and contact details won’t do much for your SEO. You need content that speaks to prospective customers and convinces them to consider you.
Keywords help you get found by your target audience. Your content should include keywords that match your prospective customers’ queries. In other words, if your target audience is looking for “handcrafted Amish furniture”, you should include this keyword phrase in your content, preferably in your title and meta descriptions.
The most effective keywords are long tail keywords. Long tail keywords contain two or more words that narrow the scope of queries you may rank for. You may be thinking, I want more traffic, not less. But consider this: Long tail keywords bring in higher quality traffic because these users are more tuned into what they’re looking for. It’s the difference between “shoes” (short tail keyword) and “hiking shoes for women” (long tail keyword). Sure, you’ll get fewer queries, but the ones you do get will be more likely to be your true, target audience.
We’re Here to Help
Would you like help optimizing up your website for search engines? We’d like to help. As SEO experts, we can drive more traffic to your site– and not just any type of traffic, the traffic that converts to customers. Let’s set up a time to talk now.
what is the meaning of seo in digital marketing
Search engine optimization is the science of improving a website to increase its visibility when people search for products or services. The more visibility a website has on search engines, the more likely it is that brand captures business.
Website visibility is commonly measured by the placement — or ranking — of the site on search engine results pages (SERPs). And companies always vie for the first page, where they are most likely to garner the most attention.
Using Google as an example, SERPs often feature ads at the top of the page. These are positions that businesses are willing to pay for to ensure placement on that first page. Following ads are the regular search listings, which marketers and search engines refer to as organic search results. The SEO process aims to increase a business’s organic search results, driving organic search traffic to the site. This enables data marketers to distinguish between traffic that comes to a website from other channels — such as paid search, social media, referrals and direct — and the organic search traffic.
Organic search traffic is usually higher-quality traffic because users are actively searching for a specific topic, product or service for which a site might rank. If a user finds that site through the search engine, it can lead to better brand engagement.
How does SEO work?
While there is a way to maximize results, it is almost impossible to fully manipulate search algorithms. Businesses often look to the shortest path toward ideal results with the least amount of effort, but SEO requires a lot of action and time. There is no SEO strategy where something can be changed today with the expectation of clear results tomorrow. SEO is a long-term project, with daily action and constant activity.
Search engines use bots to crawl all website pages, downloading and storing that information into a collection known as an index. This index is like a library and when someone searches for something in it, the search engine acts as the librarian. The search engine pulls and displays relevant information from the search query and shows users content related to what they were looking for. Search engine algorithms analyze webpages in the index to determine the order those pages should be displayed on the SERP.
What algorithms evaluate for search engine optimization?
There are hundreds of factors that go into what content from the index gets displayed into a SERP. However, they bubble up into five key factors that help determine which results are returned for a search query.
SEO benefits
Search engine optimization is an essential marketing activity to make a website or business visible on the web. But it also provides several other benefits to companies.
Builds trust and credibility
Sites that rank high on SERPs are considered to be of the highest quality and most trustworthy. Results shown on the first page are the most relevant, resulting in more credibility for the business or website. Having the right content on the site and a good user experience will help the website rank higher.
Provides a competitive advantage
When good SEO is deployed consistently, those that do it more and better will outrank the competition. Many businesses feel they cannot afford to not be on the first page of a search result. But if a team works toward that goal and shows ahead of the competition, they will have a competitive edge.
Reaches more people
SEO helps attract any user with intent at any time, regardless of phase of the customer journey that user is in. It relies on keywords and phrases to attract audiences to specific products and services. Businesses can create a list of keywords for which they would like to rank, then build content around those keywords.
Supports content marketing
By having a list of keywords to rank for and building content around those keywords, users are more likely to find the information they seek. Content and SEO work in harmony with each other. A site will rank better by creating useful, high-quality content that is optimized for those keywords. Ensuring the keywords are present in headings, meta descriptions and the body of the content will improve rankings for those terms.
Ranks better in local searches
The use of local searches are becoming more common, with users looking for products or services “near me.” To improve listings in these searches, a company can create a Google My Business account and optimize the listing for local searches. Along with that and the localized content on the website, a user will be more likely to see local search results in their queries.
Understand web environment
Users that stay up to date on the everchanging internet will be better able to execute the ongoing SEO needs for a website. By staying up to date, businesses can better understand how search works and make more informed decisions on how to change and adapt their strategies.
Relatively inexpensive
To have an effective SEO strategy, companies need to invest in the time and resources to be effective. There are companies that can be hired as SEO experts to manage the strategies, but companies with the right team in place can do it themselves.
Get quantifiable results
There are tools and analytics data that can be tapped into to measure the effectiveness of SEO efforts. Google Analytics can provide comprehensive data around organic traffic. Data includes pages that customers engaged with and keywords used in search. That data can then be cross-referenced with intended actions taken to see how SEO played a role in customer engagement or acquisition.