SEO stands for search engine optimization. Though you likely knew that much already. 

It’s an important topic for many businesses, particularly those with an online presence. Considering the massive move toward an online world, most companies have an online presence now. And some even operate fully online.

Whether you’re a business owner or marketing manager, SEO is not something you can afford to ignore.

So, we return to the first part of the question, what is SEO?

How Does SEO Work?

SEO improves how your website ranks in search engines. With good SEO strategy, you bring more traffic to your website. This translates to more views, better brand awareness, increased credibility, and stronger sales. 

That’s the basics of SEO. But let’s break it down in more depth.

Search engines, like Google, want high-quality, relevant results. Websites that deliver this mix of quantity and quality, are ranked highly by search engines. As a result, when a user searches a topic related to your site, your site appears higher on the page of results. Depending on how strong your SEO strategy is, and what keywords the user searched, your site appears in either the first or second position in a list of results.

Having such a high appearance in search engine results is crucial. When most of us search for something, we click on the first few websites that pop up. If we go beyond that, we rarely delve into the second page. So, with a high ranking website, there is a greater chance of it being clicked on by users searching for something online.

SEO’s Key Elements

There are several factors that go into SEO strategies, but the main elements are content creation, keyword analysis, backlink building, and technical maintenance.

Content Creation

We’ll start with content creation. As you can guess from the name, content creation pertains to any content that your audience watches, reads, or listens to. This includes infographics, blogs, and newsletters. You want helpful content on your website if you want to improve SEO. Helpful content gives the search engines something to rank, and is essential to SEO strategy.

Backlink Building

Going on to backlink building, this refers to when your website is linked in other websites. For instance, there is a third-party website talking about the importance of life insurance. That third-party website is ranked highly for having high-quality, relevant content. In one of their articles, the third-party site includes a link to your website, where you sell insurance products. 

The link from the third-party site is a backlink. The more backlinks you have, the better search engine ranking your website has. You can organically foster these backlinks by maintaining a library of high-quality content yourself. And there’s the option of building strategic partnerships that provide backlinking for all parties involved.

Keyword Analysis

Let’s get into keyword analysis now. When most people think of SEO, keyword analysis is often what comes to mind. And for good reason. Keywords are those words that your target audience uses when searching for certain topics, products, or services relating to your business.

There are certain keywords that are searched at an extremely high volume. These keywords are also extremely challenging to compete for on search engine rankings. Instead, the ideal keyword is what is known as a long-tail keyword. These are phrases or several words that have a high search volume, but are less challenging to compete for. Keyword analysis finds these beneficial long-tail keywords so you can incorporate them into your SEO strategy.

Technical Maintenance

Finally, we’ll get into technical maintenance. This includes site architecture, mobile optimization, website speed, and proper use of alt text. These aspects play a strong role in how your website appears on search rankings. 

You want a website that adheres to technical best practices laid out by popular search engines. Sites that do are well-received by search engines, and all their other SEO efforts have a greater effect.

Basically, technical maintenance refers to the behind-the-scenes aspects of search engine rankings.

SEO Boosts Business Performance

As I mentioned earlier, good SEO brings in many benefits for your company, such as better brand awareness, more sales, and greater trust from customers.

To illustrate how it does this, I’ll present you with a little story:

Carmen notices that her cats are bored at her small apartment. She has given them plenty of toys, boxes, and scratching areas, but they remain unentertained. Carmen decides that they need some vertical space. A cat tree would take up too much space on the ground, which is already limited. So, she decides that cat shelves are the best option.

Once Carmen has her decision, she does an online search engine inquiry on her phone. Her search is “high-quality cat shelves.” The results present her with dozens of competing websites. She clicks on the first site on the list. 

This website appears at the top of the list because it had a good SEO strategy. It makes good use of alt text, provides quality cat shelves, has a full blog with plenty of related content, and has been linked by other websites numerous times. It also functions quickly and smoothly on a smartphone, which Carmen is searching with. Plus, it delivers on the keywords that Carmen searched with a range of high-quality cat shelves.

This website also happens to be the site for your business.

Carmen looks through the site. She examines the products being offered. The cat shelves come in a variety of designs and packages, which she likes, and they are well-reviewed. For the sake of giving others a chance, Carmen goes back to the search results and clicks on the second website. But, she compares it to the first and decides the first company is the one she will buy from.

Your business, the one Carmen chose, now has a new customer. You’ve made an organic sale. On top of that, you get credibility because Carmen talks to her friends and family about her new cat shelves. She mentions how amazing they are, and before long, those cat-owning friends and family members look into your business, too. They start buying the products, and you have several more sales.

Your brand is rapidly gaining attention because it is appearing highly in searches. Even when potential customers don’t click on your website, the name of your company still gets filed away. This makes it more recognizable. Trust is also built with your company, because you are delivering on the quality and quantity demands of search engines.

And this all happened because of your high search engine ranking.

Let’s say you had a lower ranking. That means Carmen never saw your website because it didn’t appear high enough. She bought from the competition instead. You’ve now lost out on a potential sale, plus all the reputation, brand awareness, recommendations, and additional sales that come with it.

What About Paid Searches?

Paid searches are worth discussing a bit, as well. These involve bidding on relevant search engine results using advertising money. There are pay-per-click (PPC) and cost per mile (CPM) options.

With PPC advertising, you pay for certain keywords. When those keywords are searched, your website appears at the top of the results page as an advertisement. If someone clicks on that link, then you pay. 

Meanwhile, CPM models involve paying per impression. This is regardless of clicks.

SEO strategy focuses heavily on organic searches. Backlinks, technical optimization, and content all get your website ranking highly on search engine results. But the key here is that organic searches do not involve any advertising money. Since you aren’t paying for a high ranking, that money is put toward different advertising efforts to boost your business.

Now, that’s not to put you off of paid searches entirely. Both have a critical position in your digital marketing strategy. 

Paid searches provide faster results, for instance. Building organic searches takes time. It makes sense that companies with new SEO strategies get some help from paid search models as they build up their organic search results.

Either way, SEO is not something you can ignore. Especially in this day and age.