It is almost impossible for businesses to excel without having online presence via a professionally developed website and more importantly without having a proper marketing strategy. Before we move to the importance of SEO for businesses, let see some basics.
What is SEO?
SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization and it means optimizing the website based on the rules defined by popular search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo so they can understand the contents of that website easily. These rules make the website faster, readable and help tit rank better in search results.
Interestingly, SEO is not just about making websites search engine friendly but it also makes the website human friendly. Because the very reason of defining these rules is to improve the user experience, so search engines prefer websites which provide better user experience to their visitors.
Why SEO is Important for Your Business?
Millions of people all over the globe use search engines to find relevant information and websites every day. However, the majority of people only click on the top 3-4 search results that mean if your website is not appearing on the first page of search results then you are losing lots of traffic.
As mentioned in the above paragraph, SEO would get you more traffic but that’s not enough. SEO is a full framework or structure to design, develop and market a website to improve the user experience. The usability of the website could be improved with proper SEO practices.
SEO works side by side with SMM (Social Media Marketing) and SMO (Social Media Optimization). If your website is appearing on Google or other popular search engines then people are more likely to share your contents on social websites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that would increase your website exposure.
If two similar businesses are selling the same products or services on their websites then website with proper SEO practices would get ahead in the competition that would result in more customers and more sales.
What are Different Types of SEO?
As mentioned above, SEO is not a tangible thing but a set of rules and guidelines. Usually, SEO practices are divided in two types for easiness.
On-Site SEO
On-site SEO refers to improving the structure, layout and contents of the website to make it appear good to search engines and to improve user experience.
Off-Site SEO
Off-site SEO refers to practices done outside of the website to increase its exposure. For example, using 3rd party platforms and blogs to advertise the website and help it rank better.
We’d discuss these two types in details in upcoming posts.