What is SEO and Why is it Important for Your Business?

This is the first in a series of articles that will be covering Search Engine Optimization or SEO and the basics of SEO and why you, as a business owner need to know how it works and why it’s important for your business website. As a business owner, you have most likely heard of SEO but aren’t sure what it is? It is a term that all the tech guys keep using, but what does it even mean? In this article, we will go over what SEO is and how it can bring you more business. Follow on articles will address each of these areas in more detail.

Why is SEO important?

Search engines like Google and Bing have to deal with thousands of new content every day. These search engines have specific algorithms that help them choose which content will rank high. For example, when you search for something on Google, you get tens of thousands of results. It is up to the search engines to choose which articles/websites you see first. To rank high, you must optimize your website with SEO tactics. If you do not, search engines will not pay you much attention and you will rank lower in search engine results.

How does SEO work?

There are several different methods to use SEO to the best of its ability. The three methods include:

Technical SEO: This method helps search engines crawl (search) through your site easily. The search engines are searching to see if your site has any issues, and if it does, it will rank lower.

On-site SEO: These are rules that you will apply to your website and your content to make it friendly to search engines.

Off-site SEO: These are different ways you can use SEO on other places aside from your website to help it rank higher.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is a process that requires you to optimize your site for crawling and indexing. This is when search engines will “crawl” through your site to search for technical issues. Some steps in this process include:

Optimizing your URL structure (use target keywords in the slug, using lowercase letters)

Making your site easy to navigate

Ensuring your site is mobile-friendly

There are a lot of steps involved in this process. The ones included are a broad overview of what that process looks like.

On-site SEO

This type of SEO deals more with the content found on your website. Think of blogs, website copy, images, etc. On-site SEO helps search engines understand what kind of content your website features. Some steps involved in this process include:

Using keywords that are related to your business in the copy

Using internal links

Adding alt texts to your images

Off-site SEO

This method of SEO is all about link building and website promotion. You can work with other blogs in your industry and team up with them to boost both of your traffic. We will cover this method and others below:

Backlinks – This is when another website that is trustworthy, highly optimized contains a link to your site. Search engines will rank you higher because they trust the other optimized websites.

Takeaway

It is essential to understand what SEO is. SEO is an important process for running a successful online business. To gain traffic and make sales, your site must be optimized to its fullest potential. But you do not have to learn this and tackle it alone. Let the experts at Shaka Web Design Services build your website and we will also fully optimize your website so you can relax and enjoy the increase in site visitors which in turn drives more sales and revenue.