How Search Engine Optimisation Affects Business Growth
There are now more people than ever before shopping and doing business online. This means that the competition for visibility in the search engines is acute and the value of a high search engine ranking is at an all time high. Why is SEO important for business? Because SEO is a long-term strategy for online business growth which needn’t cost you a fortune.
Outsource Your Marketing has a team of SEO specialists who work with businesses of all sizes. Their goal is to increase clients’ visibility in the search results pages, enhance their ranking, and increase their conversions. In this article we look at how SEO grows your business and 5 things you can do to improve your visibility immediately.
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
SEO is a digital marketing strategy for increasing traffic to your website without having to pay for advertising. It’s called ‘organic traffic’ because it occurs as part of an online selection process that is available to everyone.
Search engine optimisation focuses upon two things; the first is technical optimisation which makes your website ‘search engine ready’. This allows search engine bots to read and understand what your business does. The second (on-page SEO) focuses upon the value your website offers to visitors.
Google has over 200 ranking factors related to technical and on-page SEO. Your position in the Google search results is dependent on an assessment of your website. The results are fed into an algorithm and your business is positioned. High ranking businesses are those that can be matched to the greatest volume of search queries for your sector.
Why is SEO Important for Business?
The top three Google organic search results (not the paid ads) enjoy 54.4% of all click-throughs. That’s a lot of traffic and – of course – every business wants to be enjoying that kind of attention. Competition for the top spot is, therefore, fierce and achieving it can take up to a year of consistent effort and professional SEO expertise. Once achieved, though, the impact it can have of your business is profound and long-lasting.
5 Ways to Improve Your SEO Ranking
Wondering if SEO really works? Try these 5 tips to get started on your SEO journey. They won’t get you to the top spot, but they will make a difference to your ranking position:
1. Check Your SEO Ranking
You need to know what your current ranking is so you can check your progress. You can do this for free. Your SEO report will not only provide you your ranking, it will also give you a list of tasks that you can carry out to improve your ranking. These refer to the technical optimisation which concerns the functionality of your website. They include:
- Improving page loading speed.
- Mending broken links.
- Ensuring your site is mobile friendly.
- Creating a site index.
- Improving internal linking.
- Simplifying navigation.
2. Research Your Keywords
Every business should have a list of primary and secondary keywords. These are the words that searchers use when looking for your product or service online. You should have around 5 primary keywords (which should coincide with the titles of your website pages), and 10-15 secondary keywords which refer to differentiating features of your business.
Keywords are what search engines use to match search queries to websites. So, if your website’s pages coincide with high volume keywords for your sector, you are more likely to get matched. You can research keywords for free and then integrate them into your website copy.
3. Update Your Website Regularly
Search engines like Google want to provide the best results for searchers, so they favour sites that are updated regularly. You may want to add new product pages to your website or, if that’s not appropriate, write a regular blog.
It’s always worth carrying out your own Google search on your product as this will reveal a panel of ‘related questions’ from searchers. This is an excellent resource for blog topics.
4. Claim Your Google Business Profile
SEO is sector specific, and it’s also location specific. If you sell your products or services in a particular region, much of your SEO will be about targeting searchers in that region. A great way to kick off your local SEO strategy is to claim your Google Business Profile.
The information you enter to create your profile will be available to local searchers. Your business will also have the opportunity to appear in the Google map for your area. The Google profile allows reviewers to leave feedback, and you can post news snippets about your business.
5. Add Trust Signals to Your Website
If you don’t already have reviews on your business website, start to include them. They’re a ‘trust signal’ for the search engines. This means that when visitors arrive on your site, there is a mechanism that helps them to decide whether or not to trust you as a business.
Another important trust signal is your security certificate. This will show in your url as ‘https’ rather than http. It reassures visitors that all data entered onto the site is encrypted and therefore secure.
Ready to Grow Your Business With SEO?
If you’re impressed by the results you get from our 5 starter tips, and you feel you now have a convincing answer to the question ‘Why is SEO important for business?’, you may want to extend your SEO marketing strategy. Outsource Your Marketing has a team of SEO experts that will:
- Provide regular SEO audits, and reporting on your current analytics.
- Integrate technical SEO into a new website design.
- Retrofit technical SEO into an existing website design.
- Create SEO rich content to add value to your site or enhance a PPC campaign.
- Research keywords for your product.
- Refresh your site’s SEO if it’s a while since it was optimised.
We don’t promise businesses instant results, but we can guarantee a growth in traffic to your site and significant ranking improvement within 3-9 months dependent on your sector. We currently have an unblemished SEO success rate with 100% of our clients seeing their web pages in the top 10 Google search engine results listing.
