What is SEO? How does it work? What are its benefits? And why should I care?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to optimizing websites or web pages to improve their visibility in search engines. This helps them rank higher in search results, thus increasing traffic and sales.
SEO is essential because it allows businesses to reach out to potential customers searching for information about their services or products.
There is a lack of optimised SEO sites in Lagos, Nigeria*. I am writing this article to help you know the meaning of these search engine optimisation (SEO)-associated terms.
For any business owner, you cannot overemphasise the importance of your website’s digital marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO).
I’ve written about a similar topic in the past. However, I feel we should go into more detail since one question often arises during my conversations with business owners about digital marketing and other business-related topics.
First, let’s start by listing the importance of SEO in digital marketing to business owners in Lagos, Nigeria.
Reasons for the Importance of SEO to Websites of Business Owners
1. SEO Web Design Increases Organic Search Traffic
Whenever I look at the Google Analytics data of a client’s site, one of the first things I notice is that, in most cases, search engines drive over 50% of the traffic to the website.
Unlike other forms of online marketing, such as email marketing and Google Ads, SEO is free organic search traffic from the likes of Google and Bing! One reason is that, as a business owner, you need to optimise your website to drive as much free targeted traffic from search engines to your site.
Otherwise, search engines will direct this traffic to your competitor’s website instead!
2. SEO Gets the Bulk of Your Marketing Budget
SEO gets the bulk of marketing budgets in many organisations for its ability to drive free traffic from search engines to websites!
Unlike other advertising channels such as PPC, traffic from well-optimised sites keeps increasing over time, which stops immediately after your budget runs out.
3. It Aligns with the Customer Journey in our Digital World
Gone are the days when the typical customer journey was a linear process.
These days, the customer journey is more complicated. SEO aligns well with the digital customer journey of the shop, browse, and buy.
4. SEO Web Design Optimised for Conversions
What is the goal of your website? How does your website contribute to achieving your overall business goal? Can you show (with data) how many new clients your website has gained (conversion rate)? When last did you update the piece of content on your website? Is your website optimised for mobile? Is it optimised for conversions?
If, as a business owner, you have a website yet cannot answer any of these questions, then you need the help of an SEO expert in Nigeria.
5. It Provides a Seamless Customer Experience
A search engine-optimised website provides a seamless customer experience. In our digital world, offering a seamless online and offline customer experience is essential.
A site optimised for search engines and conversions is a step in the right direction to achieve a seamless customer experience.
Relevant SEO-related Terms Business Owners Need to Know.
When you engage the services of an SEO expert, you need to familiarise yourself with the following terms.
It will help you understand what your SEO professional or agency is doing.
Keyword Research
Keyword research involves finding the right words or phrases your web page or site needs.
However, in recent years, Google’s algorithms have favoured websites optimised around topics rather than keywords.
Social Media
You need to know your target market to attract the right traffic to your website. It helps if you have a detailed customer persona.
Gone are the days when the typical customer journey was a linear process. SEO aligns well with the digital customer journey. Click To TweetYou need to know your ideal customer demographics. Ask yourself the following questions: what challenges are they facing that your product or service can solve? Do you know what words or phrases they use on search engines to find sites like yours? Or what words or visuals appeals to your target audience? Where does your target audience hang out? What qualities or experience does your target audience look for in a website? What are your competitors doing on their websites?
Social media is an excellent source for finding answers to all these questions and more. From the data you get about your followers from a social media platform, you can build a comprehensive customer persona that will prove invaluable to your branding, social media marketing, and search engine optimisation through data from your social networks.
Search Results
When searching on Google or Bing, the page it generates contains search results called the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
The whole object of a search engine optimisation campaign is for your website to feature prominently on the first page of the SERPs.
In recent years, Google has introduced Rich Snippets. These feature prominently on the SERPs, and having your content featured in these rich snippets is now the desire of most SEOs.
Google Search
Google is the number one search engine in the world. Therefore, your search engine optimisation usually focuses on people conducting a Google search for your keywords, phrases, or topics.
Search Engine Optimisation
As mentioned above, search engine optimisation is about building high quality content from now on and sourcing quality links from authoritative websites (through a reputable digital marketing agency, SEO company or SEO agency) to drive targeted traffic to your site.
Target Audience
Your target audience is the people you have identified whose product or service solves their identified challenge.
Search engine optimization increases your visibility on search engines and draws your target audience to your website.
Search engine optimisation services have one of the highest returns on investments in your marketing arsenal.
Content Creation
Content creation and content marketing are vital to any search engine optimisation campaign. Besides resolving any technical issues on your website, you need a content writer to help you create content optimised for search engines that attract organic traffic and improve your online presence.
Well-optimised content goes a long way in attracting targeted traffic to your website or app. Therefore, I always advise my clients to have a content marketing strategy besides an SEO strategy rather than creating content with no apparent design.
User Experience
As mentioned, you must ensure a seamless user experience across all brand touchpoints, online and offline. User experience plays a vital role in converting visitors into customers.
If your customers have a pleasant experience on your site, app, or other digital service touchpoints, they will likely convert to paying customers and brand advocates.
Search Engines
Search engines are computer programs that send out robots (bots or spiders) to crawl and index information from a database on the world wide web.
Through their business models and SEO teams, companies need to aspire to increase their search ranking on Google and other relevant search engines to drive quality traffic to their online or physical storefronts to convert them into potential customers.
Organic Search
Organic search refers to entering one or several search terms as a single string of text into a search engine such as Google or Bing.
These search engines, in return, produce a paginated list of results and gaining a high ranking in this result is one aim of search engine optimisation.
Link Building
Link building is the practice of acquiring links to your website that will help improve its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). We can do it by getting links from high-quality websites to quality content on your website. For the best link-building results, I suggest you outsource it to a competent digital marketing company or SEO agency with a wealth of experience in online marketing, search engine marketing, and social media marketing.
You need to pay attention to your content writing and for other websites to agree to link to your website. It would help if you based your digital marketing strategy or SEO campaign not only on relevant keywords but on competitive keywords too. It will help to improve your marketing effort.
Search Engine Optimization FAQs
- Why Is SEO Important?
A successful online marketing strategy relies heavily on SEO. It helps search engines find your website when people search for something related to your business or product. If you want your site to be found on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., then you need to optimise your content to rank high in the search results.
- The Benefits of Using SEO
SEO is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your website. You need to optimise your site for humans and search engines to rank higher in search results. This means ensuring that all your pages include keywords matching the user’s search query, i.e., what users are searching for.
- Best Practices For SEO
Some of the best practices include things that have to do with on-page SEO and off-page SEO, such as writing unique and helpful content, using keywords in titles, descriptions, and URLs, having high-quality backlinks from relevant websites, and making sure your site loads quickly.
- Top Ranking Factors
The top-ranking factors for SEO include high-quality backlinks from other websites, having relevant keywords in the title tag, meta description, URL, and page content, and having a website design that is easy to navigate.
Conclusion
In conclusion, SEO is important because it helps companies find potential customers.
If you’re a business owner in Nigeria, I hope I have been able to help you appreciate the importance of SEO sites.
Thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to read this. I appreciate it. If you need further help, contact us about our affordable SEO service that helps improve your search engine ranking. We can also help you fine-tune your marketing strategy.
We have an affordable SEO package for businesses of all sizes. We pride ourselves on offering data-driven digital marketing and providing clients with good ROI on their digital marketing campaigns. Although we don’t like to parade ourselves as a full-service digital marketing agency, we will have a digital marketing solution to meet your marketing challenges.
*Though this article focuses on Lagos, Nigeria, the information is valid for all sites. Regardless of their location.
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- Why and How to Start Using Search Engine Optimisation Now
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