Did you know that you can increase the number of visitors to your website and your sales through SEO? Optimizing your SEO is crucial to improving your visibility on search engines and an effective SEO strategy will ensure you are in the top search results for your potential customers.
Find out what SEO is and why it is important for your business.
What does SEO mean?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is defined as a set of techniques implemented to increase the visibility of a website to Internet users through search engines. This is done without any associated advertising purchases. When done effectively, SEO helps to increase traffic to a website.
What is the use of SEO?
Having an SEO strategy allows you to increase your visibility and awareness among your target consumers. So when users are looking for the products or services you offer, search engines will present your business in the first results if this strategy is well executed.
By working on your SEO, you will improve your positioning in Google’s search result pages (also known as “SERPs”) and you attract new potential customers. Your website is then viewed by qualified visitors and, inevitably, you will increase your sales.
However, SEO is a strategy that takes time to execute and to achieve results. In the long run, however, it pays off significantly.
Why is it important to have good SEO?
A study by GE Capital Retail Bank states that 81% of consumers use the Google search engine to find a product before visiting a shop. This means that the higher your business appears in the top search results on Google, the more likely consumers are to visit your shop if they are looking for a product there.
Why should you aim for the top results? 91% of clicks are on the first page of Google and about 70% of clicks are on the top 5 results. If your business does not appear in these results, the chances of attracting potential customers are very low.
Therefore, an effective SEO strategy will not only increase the number of visits, but also the demand for your products and services, thus increasing your sales.
What does a good SEO strategy rely on?
An SEO strategy should be based on the following three pillars: content, technical SEO and brand awareness (backlinks and mentions). In addition, in some cases, local SEO can also be an important issue.
First of all, in order to optimize your SEO, the content must be of high quality and relevant. To do this, it is important to know your target audience and create unique content that uses the right keywords and outperforms that of competitors.
Secondly, it is also crucial that your site is reliable and secure to meet the technical aspect of SEO. This allows you to communicate clearly with Google’s robots.
Thirdly, brand awareness allows you to increase the trust that search engines have in you. To achieve this, you need to work on your brand image as well as getting backlinks from a variety of relevant referring domains, brand mentions and reviews. This is time-consuming work that takes more time than the previous steps, but it pays off.
Finally, for some entities (e.g. a restaurant, a barber, etc.), local SEO allows you to attract customers close to your business. To achieve this, it is important that your Google Business Profile is properly completed and consistently up to date, that you create local content (including local keywords) and that your business is listed on a variety of online directories.
SEO and keywords go hand in hand!
One of the most important concepts in SEO is keywords. A keyword is a word or a group of words used to characterize the content of a document and to allow a search for information. It is what people will type into the search bar to find a product or service. These keywords must be integrated into your website, whether in the titles, the meta description, the texts on your website or in the URLs.
When a user types a keyword into a search engine, the algorithm tries to interpret the user’s intention and presents appropriate information, which generates a web page called SERP (Search Engine Result Page). The SERP presents the user with a series of links that it considers to be the most relevant to the keyword. Today, SERPs no longer present only ten blue organic links, but several other types of information called SERP features. If you’re interested in SERPs features, keep an eye on our social networks for our next article on the subject.
How to find keywords
There are several ways to find the right keywords to include on your website, such as paid software (examples: SEMrush, Answer the Public, Ahrefs, etc.) that give you an overview of the number of searches for certain keywords and provide you with a list of keywords to use when writing your website. These platforms also offer several other data related to keywords, such as the difficulty to rank well for them, SERP features, estimated positions of your competitors and a multitude of other data.
There are also free platforms for keyword research (e.g. Google Keyword Planner, Keywordtool.io, etc.), but the functionalities offered are often more limited than paid tools.
Regardless of the tools/platforms you use to do your keyword research, it is important to have a strategy in mind that fits with your objectives.
LET’S DO IT!
Of course, if we told you about it, it’s because we can help you! For all your SEO needs and advice, contact us today!
