When a business plans to market their business online; a plethora of options open up before them. SEO is frequently considered to be the most powerful instrument of digital marketing, as it delivers higher ranking websites over search engines and makes them accessible for all viewers.

Let us consider a definition of SEO and see why it is important.

SEO is search engine optimization. It primarily pertains to the processes which optimize a website, such that it ranks higher in search engines and gets more targeted traffic.

SEO is important because a website is likely to get many more clicks if it ranks at a high position in search engine rankings. Even on the first page of search engines, the competition for getting clicks is high. 30% of people click on the first result that they see, 15% on the second result, and 10% on the third. Positions 4-10 get only 2-5% of clicks. SEO marketers correspondingly try and ensure that the website they work upon ranks as high as possible on search engine rankings.

I would recommend to join this SEO course to understand one of the most important skills in Digital Marketing.

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What makes SEO important?

The advent of SEO has been phenomenal in terms of how people search for information. Google is the most used search engine for several years now and gets above 3.5 billion searches each day. People access Google for searching for all products, services, or information that they need, and ranking high on Google for the relevant search terms is hence important.

When the aforementioned is achieved with good SEO, it delivers a competitive edge for companies. Let us consider an example that exemplifies the same. When someone searches for Christmas trees on Google, he is more likely to click on and make a purchase from the website that appears at the top of search results. The targeted leads that a website gets when the search engine page rankings are good are higher. The traffic that one gets from search engines is organic and free, but it generates additional revenue for companies.

Ranking your webpage towards the top of search pages for the targeted keyword is a time taking process. But when one does succeed, it generates a persistent flow of traffic for one’s website. A fine idea in this regard is to do SEO for webpages as and when you add them to your website. SEO is an ongoing process in many cases, and the aforementioned technique hence works nicely.

SEO works well for one’s business, irrespective of one’s operating domain, be it legal, real estate, healthcare, or eCommerce.

How does SEO work?

Let us take a short overview of the processes involved with SEO:

Keyword research

Before one gets started with an SEO campaign, one decides upon the keywords for which one would want one’s website to rank higher. Keywords are nothing but the words and phrases that an internet user types into the Google search bar before he clicks on search.
With keyword research, one comes across popular keywords that are related to one’s products or services. These keywords are best placed to attract the target audience.

So, one should figure out keywords that have a high search volume, and use them nicely in the content over his website. A range of tools is nowadays available to aid with the process. One of the most popular among them is the Keyword Planner, which is exceedingly popular because the data in the tool is directly taken from Google.

Using the Keyword Planner is simple. One types in the phrase, which one’s customers are most likely to use when they search for his products. The Keyword Planner displays the keywords relevant to the phase, along with their search volumes.

On-page optimization and content creation

The next step is content creation for your website. A fine idea in this regard is to figure out the websites that rank high for your target keywords, and the type of content that they have.

It is a fine idea to get some idea from this content to see the kind of content that you want to create. You are likely to figure out some areas where you would want to improvise upon.

Quality content promotes customer delight and attracts more people. This further boosts the chances of your website ranking higher in search page rankings. Content should further be optimized with the use of relevant keywords.

It is then important to write the title tag and Meta description for a webpage by following Google best practices. They are displayed on the Google search page when your website appears over there. One should keep them precise and engaging, relevant to the webpage, and based upon the best practices recommended by Google.

Link building and off-page promotion

When one creates a webpage and the optimized content for it, one promotes the content online for good SEO.

When a website has a higher number of inbound links, it ranks higher over search pages. This is an important criterion used by Google to determine a website search page ranking.

A link from a reliable website, such as BBC makes your website come by as reliable, and it ranks higher in search page rankings. But inbound links from all websites have value.

A few of the top ways used for link building include writing blog posts and getting online media coverage for your website.

Conversion rate optimization and user experience

Search engines nowadays pay more heed to the user experience that a website promotes. When a website scores high on this count, it is more likely to get higher search page rankings.

A website should hence be intuitive, fast, and easy to use and navigate. This will ensure that the dwell time for the end-user is higher. A website should similarly be responsive and deliver a uniform performance irrespective of the mobile device or screen size it is accessed on.
A large number of popups or advertisements over the websites may turn to be counterproductive. So, website developers and SEO marketers should be on guard against the same.

Good SEO delivers prime outcomes for your website over the long and the short term alike. Professionals are sometimes in a better position to achieve the same, over an in-house SEO team.

This SEO course covers all these key skills and how they coordinate to become an effective marketing strategy and unlocks the potential of your marketing efforts.