What is SEO and How do I Use it For My Business?

Hey friends, I'm about to get a little nerdy! SEO. You have heard this term before but, really, what is SEO? How can I best use SEO for MY business?

According to GlobalWebIndex, 81% of people use search engines to find a product or service. But, per The Manifest only 30% of businesses actually implement a SEO strategy. SEO is about best practices that allow search engines and visitors the best chance of finding your website. If you can implement even a little SEO optimization on your website (and now throughout social media which I will explain below) you are already ahead of 70% of other businesses! That is HUGE!

So...

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is basically a fancy way to say that you are using popular search terms throughout your website to be more visible organically on a search engine.

The term organic means that your website or social media is being found without using paid ads as a source of traffic.

Now how many times have you been on Google searching for something and have gone to the second page? Raise your hand if you have gone to that second page. I'll wait. For most people and searches (75%), they don't go past the first page of Google, or their preferred search engine.

And that is why implementing SEO is SO important for your website. 

The more keywords you are able to rank for on the first page, the more customers will be visiting your website organically (without paying). If you are not on the first page for a keyword you are trying to rank for, you are losing out on business.

But First, How do Search Engines Work?

Before I delve into the easier part of SEO, you need to know how search engines work, and what you need to do on the back end to get the search engines to even find your website.

Search engines, like Google, have 3 primary functions. Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking.

• Crawling
  • Search engines send out robots or spiders (eww) to look for new content on websites. The content can be anything that is linkable, so blogs, webpages, PDFs, images, videos, etc.
  • Think of these as those creepy spider robots in The Matrix that search for live humans in the tunnels.
• Indexing
  • After finding the content the spiders follow the links to find new URLs. When they find unique content they add it to their index or database of urls that are discoverable to those searching.
• Ranking
  • Once in the data base, when someone searches for the keyword that you use, the spiders go and grab your content to put on the search results pages. These pieces of content get organized from most to least relevant.

Now, you might be asking yourself, great now that I know there are creepy spider robots searching for my website and compiling all of my information into files, how does it know what position to rank my website?

• Technical SEO
  • This is all the back end stuff on your website like
    • site structure
    • sitemaps
    • page speed
    • mobile friendliness
    • website security
    • etc
• Keyword Research
  • Keywords are what your customers use when they are searching for the product or service you sell. I'll go more into this later.
• On Page SEO
  • These are specifics for each page to be recognized
    • title tags
    • formatting and headers
    • meta (no not Facebook) descriptions
    • URLs
    • external and internal links
•  Off Page SEO
  • These are all other factors not on your website like
    • link building
    • guest posting
    • social media

But how do you know if your content is actually being recognized by Google? This is not as simple, and frankly, a little to much nerd stuff (IE Coding) for me. SO, here are some great website resources to see if your site is recognized by Google and if you have a Sitemap.

How Can I Implement SEO for My Business?

Now, that you know about the back end of SEO we will go back to the less nerdy portion of SEO. There are several different ways to be able to utilize keywords on and off your website to grow your business.

The first thing you need to do is find out what search terms your customers are looking for when searching for your product or service. There are several limited or free keyword search websites to use. My favorites are SEMRush and Ubbersuggest. These both have a limited number of searches available per day for free. Here you can type in keywords that you think people might be searching for to see what sort of search volume it has. Or, you can type in your website or a competitors website to see what keywords that website is ranking for.

You might find that you are already ranking for several keywords, but you might be at a position of 58 or 76. What does that mean? Well, it basically means that you are in the 58 or 76 search spot, or on pages 5 or 7 of the search engine. Basically you won't be seen.

These are keywords I like to call "low hanging fruit" people are searching for them, and your website is already ranking for them, but now you just need to get it in a higher position.

Once you have your keyword you need to decide what sort of content you want to create with it. Generally, blogs, like this one, are a great way to add in a keyword rich pages to your website. For instance, my keyword is "What Is SEO". As you can see, I have used this keyword in multiple areas on this blog. Here are some of the most important places to make sure your keyword is at:

1. Title
2. H1 & H2 Headline
3. Used throughout the text (but only do this if it actually fits. I don't want to try to fit my keyword in a sentence that doesn't make sense, like "what is SEO is a great way to bring traffic to my website" that just doesn't work... except for this example.)
4. Alt Tags - these are the context of images - you will want to describe the image, use the keyword, and generally I also add my business name.
5. Meta Description - this is the little blurb of text you see in the search engines that make you want to click on the website.

I Have Keywords on my Blog, Now What?

While you can just put keywords in the places above and leave it, I don't suggest doing so. The more you use that keyword, or have people click on it from other sources like other websites or social media, the more Google will look at it and say "wow, this piece of content is popular, we should move it up in the ranking". So here are some tips to do after you have created your blog:

• Crosslink throughout your website.
  • This blog is all about SEO, and I happen to have a (upcoming) product page about SEO for a service I provide. (Once my page is finished) I will make sure that on one of the first mentions of SEO I link that word back to my SEO page.
  • If there is another keyword in this piece that is used on another page I will make sure I link to that. (See below 😜)
  • This can be time consuming as you create more and more content to have to remember what keywords you've used and go back to those articles to link them, but it is worth it.
• Using your keywords on social media
  • When you write a new blog, post it on your social media! Make sure you use the keyword you want to rank for in the post copy and link your blog. The more people that click on it, the higher the chances of getting ranked better.
• Backlinking
  • This is when other websites link your pages on their pages.

This Seems Like a Lot of Work

YES! In the beginning it is, especially if you have multiple pages on your website that you need to go back to add in keywords and link. But SEO yields a higher ROI than ANY OTHER TYPE OF MARKETING. Websites that have higher rankings have an increased blog value of 429%, can decrease your customer acquisition cost by 82% and bring in $12.10 per every $1 spent on marketing according to Terakeet. And the closer you are to the first search result on Google, the higher your click through rate is! According to Sistrix the number 1 search position has a 28.5% click through rate compared to 15.7% for the second spot, and 11% for the third.

I just threw a lot of numbers at you!

Think of SEO as the Tortoise

As in the tortoise and the hare. If SEO is the tortoise than social media marketing is the hare. Social media marketing is a fantastic way to get eyes on your business fast! But, you constantly have to post, with relevant content, answer DM's, comment on others posts, and you are bouncing all around like a rabbit. But, with SEO all you have to do is the above mentioned steps once (minus posting it on your social channels multiple times) and it is done. The steady, consistency of SEO is that slow little tortoise that merrily jaunts along all while the hare (social media) is making fun of it for being so slow. But, little does that hare know of all those higher metrics I posted about above.

Whew! That is a Lot of Info

And the crazy thing, is I barely scratched the surface! There is so much more depth to SEO, I just gave you a short condensed version. So if this seems like too much information for you to do on your own, but it is just too good to pass up, reach out to join the Social Circle your friendly social media manager/ digital marketing manager and I can help you out!