What is SEO? As a blogger or online business owner, chances are you’ve heard of Search Engine Optimization. You may also be wondering why SEO is important for your online success. SEO is a big deal in Digital Marketing because it’s an effective way to drive traffic and connect with your audience or buyers. However, it can be intimidating trying to learn or navigate the different factors that make up an effective SEO strategy.
An easy way to get your SEO sorted is to hire a specialist from Fiverr to handle it for you. Even when you choose this convenient and affordable route, it’s still important for you to know the very basics of SEO.
This article will break it down for you, so that it’s much easier to digest. We will discuss the following:
- What is SEO?
- Why SEO is important for your business
- On-page and Off-page SEO factors
What is SEO?
SEO is anything you do to increase your chances of ranking high in search engine results. The ultimate aim is to show up on the first page of a search engine results page (SERP) when someone is searching for something related to your business or website.
“Write, and they will come.”
Most content creators believe that if they write often enough about a topic, they will eventually grow and get traffic from people interested in that topic. This might have been true in the early days of the internet, but now, millions of blog content are generated daily. Standing out has to be strategic and based on practical steps, not just hope and passion.
This is why SEO is important.
6 Reasons Why SEO is Important for your business
The major reason why SEO is important is because you can rank high on search engine results pages. This helps you in many ways:
1. Visibility
This is the biggest benefit of appearing on the first page of Google. Billions of Google searches are made every single day. People are looking for articles to read, and goods and services to buy. Most people searching on Google do not go beyond the first few pages. If your article doesn’t make it to the first pages of Google, it’s basically hidden away from all but the very desperate.
2. Increased sales and traffic
The more the people that see what you’re selling, the more the people that will buy from you, or visit your website.
3. Longevity
Articles that make it to the first page of Google can be there for months, even years. That means you keep reaping the benefits of that article, months after putting it up.
4. Targeting
The best thing about optimizing for Google is that the people that find you are the people that are already searching for what you’re offering. This means you have to do less work to convince them to click your link or subscribe or buy.
5. Better reputation
We know that most of the pieces that make it to the top of Google are well-written and informative pieces. Continually making it to the front page of Google searches tells people that you are an authority in your field and take time to write quality articles.
6. Skill acquisition
SEO is currently one of the highest-paying skills out there. What better way to show that you have mastered it, than your articles and website ranking high in Google searches.
SEO activities can broadly be categorized into two- on-page SEO and Off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is everything you do in a web page or article to increase its chances of ranking higher on SERPs. On-page SEO is important for writers and bloggers.
Some on-page SEO factors include:
Keywords
A keyword is a word or phrase that your target audience types into a search engine, with the hope of finding websites with related content. From the other end, a keyword is a word or phrase that you place in a website page article, with the hope of attracting searchers who are interested in that topic.
Keywords are crucial to Search Engine Optimization. If you do everything else right without using the proper keywords, it would be a waste of effort.
Learn more about keywords and how to research keywords for SEO here.
Title Tags
The title tag is basically the title of your page. It could be any page on your website- blog post, sales page etc. Your title tag is important for SEO because it tells the search engine what your content is about.
URLs
The URL is the address that leads to your article or page. A well-optimized URL will contain keywords that your audience will relate to and that the search engine will recognize. It should generally be short and straight to the point.
Optimized Images
When the images on your page are properly optimized, they tell users and the search engine what your image (and by extension, your page) is about.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is everything you do for a website (instead of just one page or one article) to increase its chances of ranking higher. Off-page SEO is important for blog owners, web administrators, and SEO specialists.
Some off-page SEO factors include:
Domain Name
Start by choosing a good domain name that includes at least one important keyword for your niche. A good domain name is easy to spell and remember, but has a high search ranking. It’s important for you to choose a domain name that relates to your brand or product. For example, if your business focuses on fashion, you’d want to pick a domain name like fashionapparel.
Domain Age
The age of your website’s domain also affects your SEO ranking. Older domains rank higher. So it’s advisable to buy your domain name before you go into the nitty-gritty of setting up your website or business.
Backlinks
The more links that lead people to your website, the higher your SEO ranking will be. Backlinks that come from other blogs or websites are important. Links from social media, emails etc. may not carry as much weight, but they still help drive traffic to your site.
Responsive Website
A responsive website works and looks good on any device- desktop, mobile phone, tablet. A website that is not responsive will negatively affect your SEO ranking and also discourage some visitors from your site.
Site Load Speed
Visitors are less likely to stay on sites that load slowly. The speed with which visitors’ bounce’ from your site is called your bounce rate, and it affects your ranking. So, a fast-loading site is good SEO.
If you’re a freelance writer, guest author, or contributor to other sites, you may not need to bother learning off-page SEO. But if you run your own blog or want to make a career as a specialist, you would have to learn at least the basics of both on-page and off-page SEO. Don’t forget that you can also save precious time by outsourcing your SEO to a specialist on Fiverr!
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission, at no additional cost to you.