Introduction
The world in the 21st century is steadily moving into the digital realm and the virtual sector exercises tremendous influence in every aspect of life, including business & marketing. It’s the search engines over the World Wide Web that decide the fate of businesses today and here comes the importance of SEO.
The importance of SEO
SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization, which refers to the process of acquiring traffic to your site from organic, free or natural search results over the search engines. SEO is an endeavour to enhance your site’s ranking online to get closer to your target audience. Search engines rank the pages on the basis of authority & relevance to searches and a good SEO practice will find you a high & dominant place over the search engines naturally. People have this innate tendency to choose their platform from the topmost search results and the higher your rankings are, the better are your chances to garner larger traffic to your portal.
The benefits of SEO
Increase in targeted traffic
The majority of clicks are acquired by the top position holders (1, 2 and 3) of search results. So if your website ranks among the first three, expect a good inflow of your targeted visitors. For example, if you are selling apples online, and you rank 2nd for "apple sellers", your website will get a good ratio of people who are looking to buy apples online. This means you get business from free natural traffic.
Cost Effectiveness
SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy for small to mid-sized businesses. Why? Because in the end, you are receiving free traffic. There are no direct expenses involved to the volume of the traffic nor is there any Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Impression (CPM). Albeit the results of SEO takes time to show up and depend on a lot of factors. But, if done right and with patience, SEO provides the best ROI (Return on investment).
Increase of website authority
SEO involves the periodical publishing of authoritative content related to your industry or business. For example, if your website is about apples, your content should be related to the apple industry. Well-researched and well-written content gives your website an authority boost over other websites that are not updating relevant content in any way. This will ensure that your website will get preference from search engines over your competitors for ranking.
Brand establishment
If your website ranks in the first 3 results of a search or just even on the first page of search results, you get free impressions which over time will build your brand awareness. For example, if you rank in the first page for "Apple sellers" throughout the year, people will know about your brand automatically. When they visit your website, they will already have a certain level of trust built in. SEO can do wonders if done right.
How SEO is done
On-page SEO
As the name suggests, on-page SEO refers to the SEO activities that you carry out on the pages of your website. It refers to the internal activities within the website which are performed to equip it as a favoured portal for search engines. The most important on-page SEO tactics are optimized titles & descriptions, user-friendly navigation, appropriate URL structuring, premium fresh content, proper text formatting, image optimization and so on. On-page SEO is taken care of during the web design.
Title tag
It is one of the major aspects of SEO practices which come under On-Page SEO. You have to create title tags for every web page which will inform the basic gist about the page search engines. It has to be within 70 characters & would have keywords pertinent to that page along with your brand name.
Meta description
It provides a tad more data on the web page than the title tag. It would include the main keywords of the page and should not be more than 25 words. This text is shown in the search results right below your website name.
Internal Linking and Tagging
The other major SEO elements to be incorporated into your web page are internal links, header tags, image name and ALT tags & bold text where needed. The most important thing, these should be done for the usability of the website from a visitor's perspective and not for the sake of SEO itself.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to the SEO tactics that are carried beyond the boundaries of your page or after your web design is completed and your website is live. It implies the external activities that are meant to promote your website as a credible and meaningful platform to the search engines & the target online audience. The three most off-page SEO tactics are backlink building, social media marketing and adding fresh premium content periodically.
Backlink building
It refers to a practice where other websites would link to your site. Always make sure to have pertinent white hat links through guest posting at leading sites, posting content at leading industry directories and creating local search profiles & social media pages.
Social media marketing
As Google is the #1 search engine today, an account at its own social networking portal Google+ would help you to earn better rankings over the search engine giant. Create your profile there & recommend your site.
Fresh premium content
You have to fill up your website with fresh, premium content that can offer quality information to visitors and is also pleasing to read. The content should be relevant to your business or industry and should be original in nature, not copied from any other website. Proper English and grammar are essential otherwise, your content will be treated as spam,
SEO Monitoring
Finally, you have to monitor your website at regular intervals with monitoring tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics, to check your SEO progress. This will help you to understand your strengths and weaknesses so that you can take immediate measures. In most cases, it is advised that you hire a good SEO agency or a Search Engine Optimization company like us to do the heavy lifting for you. SEO requires focus and dedication over a long period of time and can never be achieved through a casual or half-hearted approach.
SEO Budget
The budget for SEO will depend on your industry and the existing competition. We have a website audit service where we can audit your existing website, check relevant search terms that you may want to rank for and provide you with a goal-oriented monthly SEO budget.
Hexadesigns is a web design company in Kolkata. We design and develop websites, custom software, eCommerce, and mobile apps and do search engine optimization. This is our own blog where we provide potential tips for the common people just from our experience. Check our search engine marketing services.
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