- Are you looking to reach out to new customers and geographical territories through search engines?
- Do you know how digital strategies like SEO can help you improve revenue figures and sales margins?
- Have you tried experimenting with agencies that promise great On Page and Off Page Optimizations for your business website?
- Are you trying to explore new platforms to amplify your presence, increase exposure and build your brand?
If you have been asking yourself any one of the above questions, you have landed on the right article. In this article, we look at the basics of using digital means to help your business across several verticals. According to statistics, more than 70% of the people all over the world are likely to use search engines like Google, Safari, Bing and Firefox to search and research.
If you are doing SEO, you will be in a position to place your brand right in front of those target audiences. In this article, we are going to examine and analyse Search Engine Optimization and see how it can make a real difference to your business.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Meaning and Definition
SEO or Search Engine Optimizations consists of a series of digital techniques that help you get the most out of search engines. It is aimed to improve your digital performance by helping you-
- Rank higher on search engines for your business related keywords
- Improve exposure by getting more people discover your brand in an organic fashion
- Build branding and generate publicity in online mediums by topping search results
- Collaborating with reviewers and influencers around your brand and industry through strategies like Sponsored Posts and Guest Posting Reviews.
- Establish your brand as an industry authority benchmark by securing the best positions on various portals and search platforms.
You can think of the above five points as some of the major advantages of doing SEO for your business website. This is why a simplified explanation of SEO is important for every brand, entrepreneur or SEO.
What do you mean by On-Page and Off-Page SEO?
SEO comprises of two main aspects- On-Page and Off-Page. We will look at some of the basic points of each of them in the following section-
- On-Page SEO-
This refers to all the technical changes and optimizations that you can do to your own website. Think of them as recommendations that Google wants websites to do to make them opportune candidates for best search performance.
Improving website page loading speed, mobile responsiveness and optimization, improving URL structure, arranging meta tags, description are some of the major elements of On Page SEO. You can think of them as changes, which you will have to make on your own website.
The surest way to be completely optimized from an On-Page standpoint is to follow Google’s Quality Guidelines. This includes having the right kind of SEO optimized content.
- Off-Page SEO-
This refers to all the optimizations you need to do that is not on your website. According to SEO experts, this involves the use of SEO strategies that help in doing two main things- getting website traffic and link building for your website.
According to Google, Link Building is one of the major ranking factors on Google. This means, the more the links of your website in reputed and credible journals, platforms, blogs, review sites, the better are your chances on ranking for keywords.
Off-Page SEO strategies like Blogger Outreach and Guest Posting are aimed at not only building high quality links, but also diverting traffic from other websites to your own website. This helps in generating sales, improve branding and rank on search.
Why is Content so important to Search Engine Optimization?
You must have noticed how SEO experts and Digital Marketers frequently talk about high quality content. You must have also heard about Bill Gates’ very famous quote- ‘Content Is King’. When it comes to SEO, content is something that you should pay close attention to.
When it comes to SEO, both On-Page and Off-Page, content is what drives engagement. We are not talking about only text content. Rather, we are also referring to videos, images and infographics. SEO optimized content is a pre-requisite if you want to rank or perform on search, as well as social.
A Content Writer who specializes in creating SEO optimized content may well become one of your greatest assets ever. Keyword Research, Keyword Injection, Long Tail Keywords, H1, H2 Headings, are all-important when it comes to SEO Content Writing. Great content, which is able to marry technical SEO with creativity performs marvellously well on search engines.
If you go through Google’ Quality Guidelines thoroughly, you will realise that content is what helps in ranking, getting attention, increasing sales and building a brand. If your SEO content lives up to the ‘7 C’s of Communication’, you will not have much problems ranking on search.
Is SEO better than Paid Promotions and Boosted Advertising on Digital?
Many proponents favour SEO over other models of digital advertising, growth and promotions. They state that SEO is an organic way to build your digital presence from the foundations. If you have well-structured SEO, anything you throw on top of it stands to perform much better.
If you have a website, which is falling short on On-Page and Off-Page optimizations, you will see the difference in performance even if you invest in paid promotions. Hence, digital purists like Neil Patel, Brian Dean and others always speak highly of SEO. They keep pointing strategies on how to optimise your website from an SEO standpoint.
This is not to say that paid routes like Google AdWords or Displays do not work. They have a very high success rate as well. However, they cannot be a substitute for a properly rounded SEO strategy.
Conclusion
In recent years, there have many changes when it comes to SEO. Google has become active in rolling out updates that lead to changes in metrics on a monthly basis. The entire world is trying to keep pace with the new guidelines and benchmarks set by Google. However, what is constant is that it is necessary to always go back to Google’ Quality Guidelines and make it the foundation for your SEO strategy.
Can you think of some other ways where SEO can be an important asset for your brand? Let us know in the comments section.