Call Us Toll Free Today! (855) 610-1736

Or Simply Click The Discovery Button Below To Get Started!

 
 
 
[su_accordion][su_spoiler title=_]

Search Engine Optimization 101: What Is It and Why Do You Need It?

We’ve all heard about SEO at least once, but how many of us understand this concept and its underlying benefits for businesses from all over the world?

SEO, abbreviated from search engine optimization, is the process of improving the visibility of a website or web page in search engine’s natural (organic) results. By optimizing your website to comply with a couple of efficient SEO strategies, you can reach your targeted audience better, thus generating more traffic and getting ranked higher as compared to your competitors. Typically, the optimization process is difficult and time-consuming, requiring several tactics that focus on how search engines work, what web surfers (Internet users) search for, and also the search terms used (usually referred to as keywords) into search engines for finding a specific information.

How Do Search Engines Work?

Exactly as its name suggests, SEO implies all strategies used for optimizing a website, so it is more visible to web surfers in search engine’s results queue. Most important search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic ranking. Once a crawler accesses one of your website’s pages, the page in question will be automatically indexed, thus it will become visible to other web surfers in search engine’s results queue. The typical turnaround time of the indexing process can take longer than one month, especially for websites that have been recently started. By using various search engine optimization strategies, you can accelerate the rate at which search engines index your website, which means that all pages will become visible and will be accessed by web surfers faster.

On-Page and Off-Page SEO

SEO strategies are usually divided into two primary categories: on- and off-page strategies. On-page SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website within its own “borders” so to speak. In other words, all strategies are applied directly to the website you are attempting to make more visible, including keyword optimization, content marketing, design, and so on. On the other hand, off-page SEO is related to optimizing a website outside of its pages – for example, through social media marketing and efficient backlinking.

To properly optimize a website, you will need both on-page and off-page SEO strategies, particularly because you need to create a network outside of your website, so you can attract visitors and convert them into paying customers.

White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO

Moreover, SEO strategies are also separated into white hat and black hat. By white hat SEO strategies, we refer only to those strategies that are approved and encouraged by search engines, which include mostly content marketing, social media marketing, design, and many similar others. However, black hat SEO strategies are considered illicit and using them can easily result in ranking penalizations or even website ban. Some of the commonest black hat SEO strategies are keyword stuffing (too many keywords in the same article/post/page), paid links (paying other websites to publish one or more links to your website on their pages), content spinning (using a software that can replace the words in an article/post, completely or partially, with synonyms to create a new article that basically conveys the same idea), and many others.
Even though it might seem tempting for many business and company owners, using black hat SEO can have many undesired outcomes that can negatively affect the visibility of your website, which is better to focus only on white hat SEO strategies.

Benefits of SEO

1. Increased Traffic

Due to the fact that SEO aims to improve visibility and rise your ranking, your website will be likely to appear on the first page displayed in the search engine’s results queue, thus resulting in more people accessing your pages and, implicitly, increased organic traffic. As a result, you will be able to successfully promote your products and services, especially because those websites that are ranked high are considered reliable, which will help you build a solid customer base for the years to come.

2. Brand Awareness

It is common for new starters to want to increase brand awareness and spread the word about their businesses. By building a website that is efficiently optimized through SEO, potential customers will find you faster, and they will get more familiarized with different aspects that relate to the products or services you are offering. Consequently, web surfers will know to associate a logo, name of specific product to your company’s, and they are more likely to directly access your website rather than searching for it on Google. This, in turn, can help you get ranked even higher, topping current competitors and generating more sales at the same time.

3. Permanent Results

With time, websites appear and disappear, while others get ranked higher depending on the strategies they approach. Once you use SEO correctly and your website gets a better ranking, the results are permanent, which means that it will never be downgraded for any reason – unless you use black hat SEO strategies and get penalized. As time passes and you continually generate more traffic and revenue, your website will be ranked even higher. This means that you will end up allocating, let’s say, $5,000 a year to efficient SEO services, which will bring you profits of over $20,000 a month.

4. Cost Effectiveness

SEO is currently one of the most cost-efficient Internet marketing strategies available to business owners, because it targets those people who are proactively using the Internet to find and share information. Unlike regular advertising campaigns (such as flyers or TV ads), SEO is also significantly cheaper, which means that you can end up paying small amounts of money while getting wonderful results in turn. Considering that many web surfers are searching specifically for products and services like yours, you will end up making a huge profit a short time after implementing these optimization strategies.

By understanding the concept of SEO and working with a reliable SEO company to implement efficient strategies, your website will undoubtedly be ranked higher and better as compared to your competitors’. Even though you will be investing pretty big amounts of money into these services, the revenue you will generate will be exponentially bigger, which will help you expand your business and increase awareness even more.

We want to be your Atlanta SEO Company. Let us help you increase your sales today! Call (888) 679-3660