SEO is key to successful marketing of a business. It increases visibility of the company content, linking traffic back to the company website. SEO should be an integral part of your marketing plan as every second of everyday, someone is searching on Google (other search engines are available).  
Why businesses need SEO to take their brand to the next level

• Organic search – Use keyword research to boost your website organically as this will affect a huge part of most businesses’ website performance.

• Build trust and credibility – Establishing a brand takes commitment and time, but if you’re selling a quality product or service you will manage to build loyal customers which will increase awareness and boost traffic. From using targeted keywords, adding links and shareable content, the SEO starts building credibility and trust, so clients and customers want to come to your website for more information.

• Quality SEO for a positive user experience – Google knows how to interpret user experience. We know what we want and if we can’t find it within a few clicks, then there’s a problem and your website will suffer. Quality SEO incorporates a positive user experience which offers information in fewer clicks, quickly and easily. 

• Local SEO – Google knows where we have been and measures all our local engagement. You should optimise your brand message on a local level, focusing on specific towns, cities or regions which are relevant to the location and business sector your brand belongs to. This increases engagement, traffic and conversions.

• SEO impacts the buying circle – Awareness, consideration, decision and loyalty are the four stages of the buying circle. Customers research before buying, and their biggest advantage is the internet. By using SEO tactics to relay your message for the deal, innovative products or services it can show your customers the importance and dependability of what your product has to offer. By making your brand visible it enhances the potential that your business is the answer that the customer needs. 

Factors which impact SEO success: 

• Technical – performance and visibility and access to the site. This can be indexing, crawling, page speed, URL, and many more things.

• Onpage – the content on the website, elements that are only visible to non-users and elements that are visible to website users. 

• Off-page – these factors are about the authority, trust and relevance and building the audience. This includes the marketing around the website links, such as PPC and social media marketing. It can also be customer reviews or user-generated content. 

Keywords can sometimes have a high search volume but they can lack value and specificity. Transactional keywords are more valuable for conversion-driven businesses. Optimising transactional queries can be done by targeting long-tail search words. More specific keywords create more relevant content increasing the traffic to your website. 

It is crucial to understand how people use search engines. In order to find out this information, competitive research into analysing the sites in search results needs to be done. This will enable you to find out the competitive topics which will show you what is working in your business. Once you’ve done the research, more relevant content can be created to gain more context to expand on topics your target audience would like to see. 

SEO methodologies can be applied to any searching platforms. App stores, YouTube and video channels can also be optimised. Another good idea is to get your company set up on Google My Business which can also be optimised to improve rankings as well. Any searchable platforms are adaptable to SEO which provides opportunities to maximise brand visibility.

Your company needs to be as visible as it can be. Make sure you optimise even beyond the search engine to lead to further results. The last thing to think about is the search engine experience, which is all about optimising for people, rather than just the search engine. Content strategies need to be specifically targeted for customers, rather than the purpose of ranking higher in search engines, which should in turn make your business more successful in search engines. Don’t forget to optimise your titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and content. Finally, ensure that the URLs are search friendly.

Optimise at every opportunity possible. You will need to understand your company, know your unique selling point and the company’s vision. Use this to guide strategy metrics and goals to make your company content more successful. It is also crucial to understand your audience, that way your SEO will be more successful. 

SEO doesn’t happen overnight. The more time, effort and budget spent on SEO will improve your website and have a noticeable impact in years to come. Your website should sit on at least page 2 of Google as click throughs drop dramatically after page 2, to virtually nothing. 

To make a start you should follow these basic tips to improve your ranking:

• Ensure your website is mobile and user friendly, with easy navigation

• Ensure contact details, including a map are on the website, with a clickable link

• Ask customers to leave you a Google review

If you need any assistance with your SEO please get in touch today!

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