In digital marketing circles, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a pretty big deal. It even gets some press outside of the marketing world, and it’s been piquing the interest of budding businesses everywhere. The questions on everyone’s mind are: what is SEO and how can I use it to help my small business grow?
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is the process of utilizing knowledge about search engine ranking algorithms to place content as close to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) as possible. Before any optimization or content creation takes place, your business needs to know which keywords to try and rank on. Find specific phrases that potential customers of your business would search on Google. When they search those words, the goal is to have the first result they see be a link to your website.
Of course, it is much more complicated than this, but keyword selection and research is the ultimate starting point.
How Can I Use It?
Practically everyone uses Google for research and making purchase decisions. If you want people to visit your website, you need to somehow make it visible. There are other strategies to accomplish this goal, but SEO is among the most cost-effective.
There’s a reason roughly 53% of marketers cite creating blog content as their top inbound marketing priority. Posting blogs regularly is a great way to integrate your chosen keywords and create linkable content. This strategy is a staple for ranking improvement, traffic generation, and becoming a more visible website. These blogs will also play another important role.
Which SEO Companies Near Me Should I Use?
You might be wondering do I even need to look for SEO companies near me? If you are, the answer is both yes and no. You can certainly create and post basic blog posts on your own, but getting links from other websites is another story entirely.
Great SEO companies are able to use your linkable content as the source for other factual articles written on sites that rank better than yours. Links from high-quality sites give your site more credibility. Backlinks and offsite SEO are important ranking factors that cannot be easily done by individuals without a large network.
All in all, SEO is much more layered and complicated than simply writing a huge volume of articles. That is, however, the best place to start for any SEO beginners.