Our Ultimate Guide to Actually Understanding SEO – Part 1:

If your website is new (or sometimes even established), customers and prospects probably won’t have your domain name memorised. Unless they’re already very familiar with your brand, they aren’t just going to type your domain into their browser and land on your page. You need a different strategy to get traffic. Say hello to your new best friend, SEO.

Read on to find out why SEO is the solution you’re looking for.

Over 63,00 searches are conducted each second on Google, but if your website is hidden on the second page of the search results then nobody is going to find you. How often do you look on the second page of Google search, or even worse… the supplemental index (what even is that??).

Creating a great website can be expensive and takes time – after all your blood, sweat and tears, you need people to find you online. That’s where search engine marketing comes to the rescue, because without it, you’re basically invisible.

Join us down a three-part rabbit hole as we take a closer look at the enigma that is SEO, and explain why you need it more than you might realise.

So, What Is SEO, Actually?

SEO is the practice of optimising your website to improve your ranking on search engine result pages, and bring relevant and targeted traffic to your site.

Google wants their users to get the best search results and easily find the answers they are looking for. SEO helps the Google algorithms identify what your website is about, so that they can rank you for relevant search results. It’s a give and take relationship, help Google and Google will reward you.

“Successful SEO is not about tricking Google. It’s about partnering with Google to provide the best search results for Google’s users.”

Phil Frost

Ok. And Why Do I Need SEO, Specifically?

The first page of Google is hugely competitive. If you want your website to rank at the top, you need to use whatever advantage you can get. 

Paid ads are a great start, but you can’t rely on them alone. According to Search Engine Watch, the top three organic results get around 35% of search traffic, meaning people trust organic search results more and websites that get to the top organically are proven to get results.

As well as ranking your site in search listings, properly integrated SEO will also improve the user experience of your website by making your page more relevant, easier to navigate, simpler to read and generally more efficient.

If you want to show on the first page of Google search results, or better yet, in the first few results, your website needs to get three things right:

– Search engines need to be able to find your site
– They must be able to easily recognise what your site is all about
– Your site should show credibility for what you’re promoting – aka “authority”

The bottom line is that while SEO is a vital component in any marketing strategy, it really doesn’t need to be complicated – and you shouldn’t be put off by it.

Engaging with a specialist (like us!) can take the hassle out of SEO, and provide your business with valuable leads.