Using SEO to Meet Your Goals
Even if your business publishes the best, most engaging content on the Internet, none of it will matter if users can’t find it on the endless pages of search results. Only 28.5% of users click the first organic result and that number drops to 2.5% by the 10th result (Search Engine Journal). This means that if your website doesn’t manage to work its way to the first page of results, it will likely be lost in the vast expanses of the web. How do marketers combat this fate? They perform something called SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.
What is SEO?
As mentioned earlier, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is the practice of improving and curating a digital presence so that it is favored over competitors by search engines such as Google and Yahoo. There are various activities associated with this practice, such as utilizing the correct keywords, making sure that the text is “crawlable”, and sharing links that lead to other sites. A longer list of these activities will be described in further detail soon, but for now, let’s discuss why SEO is important for every business to prioritize.
Why is SEO important?
SEO is vital to all businesses with a growth-oriented mindset because it helps increase the brand’s visibility and awareness via various search engines. According to WebFX, about 93% of online experiences begin in a search engine - this is a massive amount so surely businesses want to be included in those results! Being favored by search engines can result in more traffic, engagement, and even conversions. It can also help the company be viewed as more authoritative and credible, which leads to more consumer trust. Best of all, it’s a cost-effective way to bring organic, motivated, and action-oriented customers to your website. It doesn’t get much better than that!
How does SEO work?
Moz is a well-known SEO software that helps businesses improve their SEO practices. The company created an excellent resource based off of the legendary Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs but with a SEO twist, titled "Mozlow's Hierarchy of SEO Needs."
The seven layers of the pyramid each represent an activity that helps improve a website’s SEO. The layers at the bottom are the most important, as they are essential for a website to be ranked within the search engine. The layers at the top also help with ranking, but their main benefit is improving a website’s competitiveness. Although all seven layers are important, today I’ll just be discussing the bottom three layers in detail. All businesses can and should try to implement these three SEO activities at the very least.
CRAWL ACCESSIBILITY: “Crawling” is how search engines learn what’s on your website. To know if your text is crawlable or not, try copy and pasting it: if you can’t select the text, then it likely isn’t crawlable. This means that if you have images with text on it (such as the pyramid image above), then search engines won’t be able to index it. Indexing is how search engines process and analyze information provided through crawlable text, key content tags, images, videos, and more (Google Search Central). Indexing is how a site eventually gets ranked on search engine results, so it’s important to make sure the search engines can “crawl” your site with ease! To check which pages of your site have been indexed, search the term "site:yourdomain.com.” If a page is listed on the results then congrats, it’s indexed! If it isn’t listed, then try checking out this resource to make the necessary changes.
COMPELLING CONTENT: Having high-quality, interesting content on your website is essential because search engines prioritize websites that offer real value over ones that are more generic or simple. They look for content that is relevant, unique, and informative. Another benefit of having compelling content is an increased engagement rate from users. The more people that engage with a website, the higher the website appears in search results.
KEYWORD OPTIMIZED: Keywords are important to consider because it’s the main way that users are led to your website. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner can help businesses develop a list of relevant keywords to include in all of their marketing activities. It is important to remember that keyword usage should be intentional yet natural. Including certain keywords in locations such as alt text and headings is beneficial, however, overusing keywords just for the sake of SEO can actually harm a website’s rankings.
If you’d like to learn more about the rest of Mozlow's Hierarchy of SEO Needs, please check out their free resource called “The Beginners Guide to SEO.” Now that there’s a basic understanding of what SEO is all about, let’s discuss something that contributes to SEO and improves organic traffic: link building.
What is link building and why does it matter?
Link building is “the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own” (Moz). By linking to Moz’s website in the previous sentence and earlier in the article, I am helping them link build. Having other companies share links that lead back to your website helps search engines determine the credibility and relevance of your content. Search engines use links in two primary ways:
To determine how pages should rank
To discover new pages that can be included in search results
Of course, rankings are dependent upon factors mentioned in Mozlow's Hierarchy of SEO Needs, but also through the credibility and relevance provided via link building. As for finding new pages - search engines don’t have the power to find sections of sites just because they exist: they must be found through methods such as crawling, XML sitemaps, or link building.
Now that the basics of link building has been covered, here’s some tips to get other businesses to start sharing your hyperlinks!
How to start link building
There are many methods to get your links out there but something always remains true: your content must be high-quality, engaging, and valuable in order for your audience to want to share. Here are a few simple ways to start link building today.
Publish informative blogs about topics related to your industry. Not only will this make your team look knowledgeable and dedicated, but it will also cause organic traffic to come to your site. Think about it: how many times have you searched a question online and used the various results to come to a conclusion? Providing answers that others cannot provide makes you standout and invaluable to potential customers.
Be a guest blogger on another site. This shows off your competence which is great for credibility and also provides you a platform to subtly (or not-so-subtly) promote your business. Try adding a link back to your website in the author’s note or reference something that you’ve discussed in past blogs on your own website (while providing a link of course).
Create high quality products that others want to talk about. Potential ways that products could be linked to on other websites is through gift guides, recipes, community forums, and more. Develop a product so good that customers can’t help but want to promote it on their platforms for free.
Build a community that supports one another. Find businesses that have similar values and develop a mutually beneficial relationship - you share their links and they share yours. Sharing links helps you look more professional and trustworthy, while being shared does the same while also improving SEO. It’s a win-win situation!
Now that you have some ideas for how to begin link building, I’d like to end this blog with an example of how SEO influences an industry that I’m interested in - graphic design.
How does SEO interact with the graphic design industry?
Graphic design interacts with SEO in more ways than one. There are many factors that come into play but here are some of the primary ways that graphic design affects SEO:
NAVIGATION: Websites that have a sensible and engaging layout helps improve user’s experiences which reduces the bounce rate, therefore improving SEO. It’s important to have navigation that is seamless while also visually appealing. Hiring a great graphic designer with a speciality in web design is the best way to achieve this and reap the SEO benefits.
IMAGE OPTIMIZATION: Websites that take a long time to load are less favored by search engines. Something that has a great impact on website loading times is images. They must be the appropriate file type, not too big of a file size, and only placed where needed. Optimizing the use and placement of images can improve the website’s overall performance, thus improving SEO.
ACCESSIBILITY: Search engines pay attention to how accessible a website is when developing the rankings. Graphic designers can improve accessibility in many ways: writing alternative text for images, choosing high-contrast color schemes, and adding captions to videos, to name a few. Everyone deserves to experience web pages in a way that works for them, so it’s just a bonus that this practice also happens to improve SEO.
I hope I’ve inspired you to take the beginning steps towards improving your website’s SEO. Thank you for reading and happy searching!