If you’re involved in your brand’s digital marketing strategy, the term SEO (search engine optimization) probably comes up very often. The role of SEO is to help your grow your business with strategies such as backlink outreach or on-page SEO optimization.
When properly applied, SEO can increase the visibility of your website, and the strategy can boost brand awareness and drive traffic to your site. However, understanding all of the ins and outs of SEO can also be confusing and time-consuming, which is exactly why many brands turn to professional SEO services. Not sure if you need SEO? Here’s a quick look at why SEO should be a crucial part of your digital marketing campaign.
The role of SEO in Digital Marketing
1. Boost website visibility and rankings
Website visibility and rankings go hand-in-hand—you simply can’t have one without the other. The role of SEO works to increase website visibility, making it easier for online searches to find your site. For instance, local SEO like working with a local expert in SEO in Montreal can be beneficial to give local backlinks.
An effective SEO strategy will move your website higher in the SERP (search engine result page) results. Instead of ranking below the top ten results, your page can be one of the first listings that pop up on the results page. The higher your search ranking, the more visible your site is, and this often translates to more traffic to your site. Did you know an estimated quarter of web searches click on the first couple of SERP results?
2. Increase web traffic
When you boost your website’s visibility and rankings, you typically see an increase in traffic. What is traffic? This refers to the visitors to your site. Even if every visitor doesn’t make a purchase, you’re still generating leads. From there, you can use other marketing strategies to turn visitors into customers. The role of SEO is to increase your organic traffic.
A quick example of how important SEO is to increasing web traffic is that you can boost your click-through rate (CTR). Sometimes, by as much as 30%. Just imagine the number of site visits you can convert into sales.
3. Role of SEO in website authority
Page authority (PA) is something search engines look for in a website. An authoritative website has quality content that is trustworthy, relevant, and has something to offer visitors. SEO can help your site excel at this search engine metric.
Your website’s authority is ranked on a scale ranging from 1 to 100—the higher your score, the more authority your website has. Finding your PA rating can be tricky, but a professional SEO service has the necessary tools.
Influencing your PA ranking is difficult, but using SEO best practices can help you move up the scoring system. Something SEO often employs is to insert external links from credible and authoritative sources.
4. Improve website UX
SEO is often critical in ensuring your visitors have a great experience on your site—this doesn’t mean you have a glossy website filled with bright colored graphics, those this doesn’t hurt. Creating a great visitor experience means your website is easy to navigate, where every link is functioning, and there aren’t any delays between page loading.
Slow page loading times are a primary reason visitors leave websites. This can affect your bounce rate and the number of conversions your site makes. High bounce rates can cause your site to drop in the search engine rankings.
You can’t always rely on Search Engines
The algorithms used by search engines can run into hiccups. If you ignore these issues, you’re risking watching your website fall in SERP rankings.
Thankfully, an effective SEO strategy accounts for these occasional failings, and by using the right SEO tools, you can avoid these issues. Following your site’s metrics allows you to easily resolve issues that can affect search engine results.
What are some of the problems that can cause search engines to lower your site’s visibility? These can include the following:
- Coding errors that block search engines from crawling your site
- Non-working internal and external links
- Duplicate pages
- Length forms with slow loading times
- Poor grammar and other issues with semantics
You can also run into search engine errors if your website is overloaded with audio and video files or images. This also applies if the embedded media does not match the page’s content.
Role of SEO: strategy trifecta
A common misconception is SEO only applies to links and content. However, there are several types of SEO practices.
1. On-Page SEO
This type of SEO deals with content, and some SEO services often include assigning keywords, updating item descriptions, regularly adding new content, restructuring old articles, and using appropriate HTML tags.
2. Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO occurs off of your website, which is when backlinks are added. But the begs the question— what are backlinks? Backlinks are when another website links to your content. For example, a visitor is on someone else’s webpage and clicks on a link that connects to your site.
- Backlinks are an effective way of boosting your site rankings and visibility.
- Other aspects of off-page SEO can also include,
- Managing your site’s social media accounts
- Handling reviews and responses
- Watching for spam backlinks. These can lower your SERP rankings.
You may also use off-page SEO to create content for other platforms or to conduct an outreach campaign.
3. Technical SEO
This type of SEO looks at what’s going on behind the scenes. Unless you have a skilled IT team familiar with SEO, it’s probably best to work with the experts. An SEO service can easily handle every technical aspect.
These typically include:
- Conducting regular site audits
- Locating and removing/fixing duplicate content
- Teaching Google how to crawl your website
- Optimize code for faster page loading times
- Creating a desktop and mobile-friendly site
SEO services can also help you create a budget for routine website crawls. Having an SEO budget is crucial for developing an effective strategy.
Need a little SEO boost?
There’s a lot to learn and know about best SEO practices, and adding to the difficulty are the constant changes to how SEO functions. As search engines evolve, so does SEO. Just when you think you’ve mastered the practice, a new change comes along. Most business owners are ultra busy, and keeping up with SEO takes time and effort is time intensive. If you’d like to chat, don’t hesitate to reach out to our SEO company.