You’ve likely heard about SEO. But many people don’t know what it is or why SEO is important. The importance of SEO mainly pertains to businesses looking to expand their reach and improve their reputation among their target audience. Because SEO is affordable and accessible it is the essential marketing tool for small-to-medium businesses.
SEO is about more than appeasing the Google bots and adhering to strict algorithmic rules. Though those elements are a portion of the SEO puzzle, it truly comes down to engaging with your customers in a way never before attainable. Whereas traditional advertising was largely reserved for companies with extensive resources, digital marketing and SEO put the power in the hands of the little guy. Continue reading to learn more about why SEO in Denver and Denver digital marketing firms are important.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is the practice of improving the quantity and quality of website traffic. It also increases exposure to your brand through organic search results.
SEO is as much about people as it is about search engines. Content creation needs to focus on relevant content for the user. An SEO campaign founded on trying to appease computers is an SEO campaign doomed to fail. Though you have to adhere to algorithmic protocol, people visit Google looking to answer questions in easily relatable, human terms. So, the more you take the user into consideration while running an SEO campaign, the more successful that campaign will be.
Taking the user into consideration is about more than keywords. You have to answer their questions. You have to be an expert in your field to create content that users want to digest. In effect, you not only have to know the search intent behind the user. You also have to know how to solve their problems.
Search Engine Basics
Search engines run like answer machines. They scour the internet looking to solve your questions in a meaningful way. They do this by indexing all of the websites on the internet. Another word for this process is known as “crawling.” After crawling and indexing, the search engine “ranks” each page. The pages with the highest-ranking not only display your content to more users and thus generate more traffic. They also have the most meaningful content, meaning it prompts more sales.
Why Is SEO Important?
Organic Search Is Typically the Primary Source of Website Traffic
Organic traffic is a critical portion of SEO and a business’s digital marketing success. Since Google owns such a substantial portion of the website traffic, adhering to their rules is an excellent way to ensure you keep a steady stream of traffic to your website. High-quality SEO and a highly effective website are what generate organic traffic from Google.
SEO Builds Trust and Credibility
User experience is the cornerstone of high-quality SEO. Making an appealing website with intuitive navigation makes it easier for your customers to make decisions and solve their problems.
Clean, functional websites translate to an easily discoverable and trustworthy website. Your website also needs to build authority using the following aspects:
Natural backlinks
Positive user stats
Machine-learning signals
Optimized content and page elements
You can’t build authority overnight. Establishing your brand authority takes time, effort, and persistence. You should understand this before assuming the second you create your website, it will take off and generate numerous leads and organic traffic.
SEO Is the Best Way to Understand the Voice of the Consumer
Using effective SEO tactics delivers you straight to the source: the consumer. To employ these techniques, you need to understand industry macro shifts. Through spoken or word information, you should be able to devise a strategy that echoes the voice of the consumer.
You can use the following data to devise an effective SEO strategy that accounts for the user’s experience and consumers’ care:
Search query data
SERP analysis
Analytics data and AI insights
Solid SEO Means a Better User Experience
User experience encompasses a wide range of factors that include both on and off-page SEO techniques. Elements such as page speed, keyword density, and domain authority all describe metrics that contribute to user experience.
However, user experience can’t be quantified by metrics. There is an X factor to user experience that has to do with design elements, engaging content, and innovative navigation.
All of these converge to form your website’s user experience. The websites and brands who make their website’s user experience the most enjoyable will likely see the favor returned in the form of their customer’s loyalty, increased traffic, and higher rankings.
Local SEO Increases Local Customer Engagement, Traffic, and Conversions
Local SEO describes how well you can attract local visitors to your website. It is important for a few reasons. If you run a local business, you need to generate a favorable reputation in your local market. For small-to-medium businesses, local SEO is one of the most critical processes.
You can target specific neighborhoods, towns, cities, and regions to ensure your brand becomes a fixture of the community. You can also target various target demographics such as age range. Local citations and backlinks, as well as regional listings relevant to the local sector, promote local engagement.
To promote local SEO, brands should optimize a brand’s Knowledge Graph panel, Google My Business listing, and its social media profile.
SEO Impacts the Buying Cycle
Using SEO makes your advertisements, promotions, and your inventory more impactful. It highlights the importance of your offers and creates trust among your target audience. To make a connection to your audience, you need to consider your buying cycle and whether the customer can see the clear value of your product or service through your advertisements and buying structure.
Conclusion- Why Is SEO Important?
SEO has been around for years now and though it’s adapting, it’s not going anywhere. Despite businesses being able to expand in the national and even international sphere, small-to-medium businesses still need to be able to attract their local markets if they want to be successful. Local SEO is the easiest and most effective way to do so.
Additionally, if you’re trying to break into a new sector or expand your reach into new markets, SEO is the easiest and most affordable way to do so. Traditional marketing is quickly becoming antiquated and SEO is the wave of the future. Simply put, more people are using Google to find solve their problems than magazines, newspapers, and television ads. If you don’t shift accordingly, you will leave a massive opportunity on the table for no reason.
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