What was SEO Designed To Do For Your Company?

In our last blog, we talked about what social media does for your company and what your expectations should be of that powerful tool. Today, we are going to go a bit deeper and talk about what SEO will do for your business and what your expectations of it should be! 

Welcome back to the Creative Consulting blog, your one-stop shop to learn and discover everything connected to the social media marketing world and then some! You've also found a wonderful company to work with if you're looking to build a website, design a logo, rebrand your company, have social media management, marketing analysis and consultation, and search engine optimization (SEO). We are here to help not only provide these services to you but to help your company become exactly what you've always wanted it to be and more. We are passionate about the social media world and continue to learn and grow with the industry as it grows and changes! In our last blog, we talked about social media as a whole and what you should be expecting from it as a business owner, and what you need to put into it to become successful. This week, we are going to be taking a closer look into SEO and what you should expect from it! 

What Is SEO? 
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is designed and created, in short, to increase the visibility of your website in relevant searches. The better your visibility and the more your website comes up in relevant searches on the internet, the more likely you will gain attention from the right kind of client. The right kind of client is your target audience that will want to buy your products, become a returning customer, and share your company with their loved ones and colleagues. Popular search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo all use bots to comb the internet and every website out there (according to siteefy.com there is 1,197,982,359 website globally as of January 1, 20201) collecting information from each of them and they put them into an index. Once this information has been put into this index, each search engine uses algorithms to analyze the information by ranking factors and signals to determine what order every webpage should appear every time someone asks a question or searches for something in said search engine. Each algorithm that these popular search engines use has been created to pull up relevant and authoritative websites that will give searchers exactly what they want and the highest quality of what they are looking for. What else is very interesting is that you can't pay search engines to give your website a higher search ranking, you have to put the work into your website to make this happen. 

Why Is SEO Important For Your Company's Marketing Strategies? 
Now that you know a little more about what SEO is, it's time to learn why it is so important for your business marketing campaign. Searching for a service or a product is one of the most popular ways to gain traffic for a company's brand, website, and one of the most popular ways new customers will discover you. It is also a very powerful complement and additive to your existing marketing plan and channels. Staying as high as possible in a ranking search will also help you stay ahead of your competition. Just like social media, SEO is something you can't sleep on anymore and it can't be a last thought or option. If you have a beautifully designed website and powerful social media platforms for your business, it won't complete or reach its full potential until you add in the element of SEO. While SEO will help your website rank higher when someone turns to an online search, and will help increase traffic to your website, it can provide a lot more to you and your company when used correctly. 

• SEO helps build authority and credibility for your brand. The bots used to scan websites and then analyze the quality of it are looking for quality content. This is why the websites you find at the top of any search are so stunning and provide impeccable information The higher the quality of what you are offering potential clients, the more your followers will look to you as a leading source of information. 
• When you have a high ranking of SEO, this also means your website is accessible and provides an excellent user experience. This includes things like excellent customer service, a website that is easy to use and understand, and is very ADA compliant. When an excellent product or service is connected to a website that is easy and welcoming to all, you will constantly have new and returning customers. 
• SEO is something that is going to be around for a long time. It might continue to grow and evolve like everything does, but it's not a fad tool that's only hip and cool for the "in the now" standards. SEO is a long-term investment that will help you for the long term, and it will help you stay up to date with the market, your industry, your consumers, and the environment of the web. 
• Having SEO is also a way to highlight what isn't working. Without it, how do you know where you stand in the search world and how can you learn to grow higher in search rankings? That's the glory of SEO, you will always know this information! If you're not on the first page of a search, you know you're not being considered as a good resource, even if your product quality says otherwise. It's time to get back on track and improve your site to improve your rankings. 
• According to Forbes, SEO remains one of the best tools to get more customers for business, especially small businesses that are locally focused. When using local SEO, it can help improve the number of local customers to your website or store by specifically targeting users that are searching in your area. For example, Google tailors its searches geographically, so if you are using your SEO correctly, your company can dominate local search specifically to your niche. 
• SEO is beginning to get smarter and to understand more with every new update, and it is learning and paying attention to what users are looking for. If you invest the time into creating and adding content to your website based on what customers are looking for, the higher priority your website will receive in any search relevant to a specific topic. This is a focus on intention and not just the use of rich keywords. This blooming new idea goes back to what we talked about in our last blog and creating worthy content. You want to create content that answers your clients' questions and provides them useful actionable content that they can use right now. This will help attract your customers and raise your SEO ranking! 
• The idea of putting all of your eggs into one basket is not a smart one, and it's not smart for your company. When creating a marketing plan, putting everything and all of your expectations into one platform isn't wise. Using SEO is another chance to grow your social marketing channel, and it will help you generate new leads while still getting results from your current campaign methods. 
• According to Forbes, many millennials aren't a fan of advertising, and they don't trust it. As we've mentioned in previous blogs, the millennial generation is one of the largest generations on the planet right now, which means it is the largest group buying products online, the most active online, and who you want to cater to. Instead of using traditional ads, why not invest the time into the source the millennial generation is using to look for goods and services; search engines! These tools are becoming more relied upon every day and will continue to get more popular. 
• You want to invest time and money into something that gives and provides results in hard information, SEO can do that for you! You can see your results in real-time with website analytic tools. When you use these tools, you can monitor your SEO performance and see the amount of website traffic you're getting, what your bounce rate is, the amount of time people are spending on your website, and what the conversion rates are. 
• SEO works to promote your business 24/7/365 even when you're not in the office. SEO allows you to always be available when customers go looking for you, and a lot of time that is after normal working business hours. SEO is a powerful way to promote everything about your company in a non-traditional way of promotion. 

What Are Some Examples of SEO? 
Now that you've hopped on board with the idea of SEO and are working towards getting everything out of it that you possibly can, what are some real-life examples of SEO? 

• Updating a page, article, or link that used to rank well or is now broken. 
• Incorporating rich keywords and phrases into your website that have been chosen after extensive research and experimentation to your website. 
• Consistently adding keyword-rich articles and content onto your site. A great example of this is exactly what you're reading right now, a blog! 
• The use of strong headings on every page of your site, and making sure they are highly relevant to exactly what the content is on your page. 
• Consistently including a call to action on your site and across all of your social media platforms. 
• Making sure that all of your content, especially photos, are labeled correctly and describe exactly what the picture is and why it is being used on that particular page on your site. 
• Making sure your load time of your website and every page of your website is fast and efficient.
• Creating long-form content. A prime example of this are longer blogs, which is exactly why all of our blogs have high word counts. 
• Including keywords in your URL
• Avoiding keywords and categories that attract illicit or irrelevant comments, bots, and clickbait. 
• Adding internal linking to your site. 
• Adding and including more high end and authoritative backlinks 

We understand that SEO can be difficult and we recognize that it is a huge undertaking to add to your online marketing and online presence. This is why it is so important and why many companies hire their own SEO specialists, and this is why we offer it in our services. In all honesty, it is a full-time job. To successfully add SEO to your site, it isn't something that you can pick up and become a master of overnight, it is something that needs to be learned and it needs and deserves your time and dedication. With that being said, remember how much it does for your company and its success. SEO is a very worthy and worthwhile investment! Do you have any questions about SEO? Please reach out and chat with us, we will be more than happy to spend some time with you on the topic! 

---