Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is a key digital marketing strategy that helps improve your website’s performance on search sites like Google to drive more quality traffic to your page. However, effective SEO strategies are constantly evolving as search sites (and the algorithms that define them) also change. As a result, managing SEO must be an ongoing process for your site and needs to involve everything from maximizing content to learning how to maintain rankings and traffic with a website redesign.
Making your website relevant and SEO-friendly involves a full-scale assessment of where you are now and a plan for where you want to go. This starts with understanding the basics and importance of SEO as well as finding the help you need to make your business stand out where it matters.
Understanding the Basics of SEO
Before we get into the details, it’s important to state a simple fact: The web (and your website) is for people, not search engines. Search engines are just the way you drive those people to your site. Keeping this people-first concept in mind is critical to understanding successful, ethical use of SEO in modern digital marketing.
In short, the people-first approach requires you to plan every aspect of your site for the people who will ultimately be driven to it, not just the search engines and bots crawling the web and producing search results. Otherwise, once people land on your site, they will quickly click away.
With that fact in mind, let’s focus on the basics of what successful SEO looks like in practice. Optimizing your website for search engines involves a few key strategies:
- Producing well-written content that is straightforward, scannable, and easy to read
- Identifying and strategically using key words and key phrases in that copy
- Setting up the backend (technical) aspects of your website, including metadata and links, using established guidelines
Although they are simple to list, each of these elements of a successful SEO strategy require a specific approach rooted in experience. Writing, for example, can seem easy, but writing good web content is a nuanced and specialized field. Your copy needs to ensure that anyone who comes across your site can easily understand the point while also appealing to the specific audience drawn to your site. Additionally, you need to capture that audience’s attention in as little as three to five seconds, meaning what you write and how you write it both matter a great deal.
How Does SEO Work?
The web is for people, but the reality is that what we see on the web is largely determined by search engine algorithms that dictate how SEO works with the web. Entire textbooks, college courses, and even majors are dedicated to the subject, but at its core, SEO is a language that connects your site to search engines.
Let’s break it down into four simple steps:
- Search engines are the primary tool users employ to find answers to their questions or solutions to their problems.
- After users input their queries, these search engines crawl the internet and use their own proprietary (highly secretive) dynamic algorithms to look for the answers and solutions that users seek.
- Through SEO, the language you use (via keywords, links, and optimized content) to speak to the search engines as they crawl your site lets the search engines and their users know that your site contains the answers they need.
- As a result, your site ranks higher, or appears earlier on the page of search results, as compared to your competitors.
Key Benefits of SEO for Your Business
Once you understand how SEO works, its benefits are pretty obvious. You want to make sure users are seeking answers or solutions that are found on your website. SEO increases the chances of success by placing your website higher on the list of search results that users receive after they input a query into a search engine.
On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO Strategies
Over the years, as search engine algorithms have become more complex, the way that site owners approach SEO has also changed. There are now two distinct ways to approach building your site’s SEO: on-page and off-page.
On-page SEO consists of all the strategies we have already discussed. It is the act of building your site (or optimizing what is already on your site) with SEO in mind. In essence, this means making every effort to speak to the people visiting your site as well as the search engines crawling it to tell users (1) what your site is about and (2) why it is relevant to the query.
Off-page SEO, on the other hand, focuses on areas beyond your own website. The goal is to build your site’s visibility, authority, and reputation in a way that appeals to both the people using it and the search engines looking for it. Specifically, off-page SEO includes items like backlinks, citations, and brand mentions.
Why SEO Is a Long-Term Investment
It’s important to keep in mind that SEO is not a quick solution. The research and planning that you make in the first month need to be implemented and applied to your website design, integrated into content, and posted on social media as well as in paid ads. All of this takes time.
So, how long does it take for SEO to take effect? Generally, about three to six months, but similar to compound interest for a savings account, those initial investments will also build over time. In fact, for most searches, the top 10 ranked pages are at least two years old.
How Elevation10K Delivers SEO Success
Building your website’s SEO not only takes time but also takes skill, which is why businesses partner with Elevation Ten Thousand for their SEO and other digital marketing services. We designed the organic marketing services at E10K to help businesses at all stages of web development, whether they are just starting to build their sites, revising their existing sites, or trying to maximize current SEO practices. Contact us today to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SEO different for local businesses compared to national brands?
Although the basic steps of SEO (e.g., keyword research, high-quality content) are the same, the strategies that businesses use for national versus local rankings are vastly different. National SEO is much more complex than local SEO, involving larger visibility and a broader audience. Local SEO, on the other hand, needs to be more highly refined to a geographical audience. These differences require a unique approach to keywords, paid search, social media, and more.
How does SEO impact mobile users specifically?
Mobile and mobile users matter a lot in SEO. The purpose of SEO is to raise your website’s visibility in search engine rankings, and many people use alternative devices now, including mobile phones and tablets, to search. Google knows this, and specifically rewards sites that function well on multiple devices with higher rankings, thanks to a process known as mobile-first indexing.
What tools are commonly used to measure SEO success?
The most common tools marketing professionals use to measure SEO success are Google Search Console and Google Analytics, both of which are free. Other common tools include SEMRush and Moz, but these are paid services.
Can SEO help with voice search optimization?
Yes! Like search itself, SEO practices are constantly evolving, and this includes optimizing sites for voice search. Common strategies used by marketers for this purpose are long-tail keyword optimization and increased load speeds on sites. In addition, incorporating conversational language into content and integrating local SEO into pages has a positive effect on voice search results.
What are common SEO mistakes to avoid?
SEO has evolved quite a bit over the last decade, so it’s important to make sure any strategies you use are optimized for modern users. Old techniques, such as keyword stuffing, duplicating content, outdated content, and generic language, especially in keywords, are no longer helpful and should be avoided.
