Before we answer the questions of ‘what is SEO’ and ‘why is SEO important’, let’s look at why it is essential for your business to rank high in the search engine results pages (serps). Once we have done this, we will then outline why a realistic SEO strategy is vital for your small business.
Just imagine that if every time someone searches for your products or services online, using whatever combination of keywords they choose, they see your website on the first page. This means that the searcher will begin to see your website repeatedly every time they search for your products or services, causing them to believe that your business is the main player in the industry and is worth checking out.
This is what a well-honed SEO strategy can do for your business, which is why it is so important to small businesses, giving them a competitive edge that is second to none.
What is SEO?
SEO or search engine optimisation is a strategy or a set of techniques that are used to optimise your website for the search engines and for your visitors, so that it ranks highly in the serps. So the answer to the question ‘why is SEO important?’ is that without optimising your website, you will have to rely on paid traffic to your website, instead of receiving free traffic from the search engines.
Essentially, the search engines – Google, Yahoo and Bing, for example, need to have a reason to rank your website highly in the serps. This is why SEO is so important, because whilst they use secret algorithms to decide which websites will rank the highest, we do know some of the factors that influence this ranking. For example, the search engines need to understand the topic of your website and whether it is a good match to a searcher’s keyword query.
This is where one element of your SEO strategy comes into play, because if you have the right keywords in the right places on your website, the search engines will correctly match your website with the searcher’s keywords. Along with other factors that are essential for making your website attractive to both the search engines and your visitors, your website will start to rank higher in the serps.
Why is an SEO strategy essential for small businesses?
As you can appreciate, ranking as high as possible in the serps is essential for attracting free traffic from the search engines and if this traffic converts well, your revenue will increase rapidly over time. Unless Lady Luck shines on you, ranking on the first page of Google is not something that can be achieved without a sound SEO strategy.
Did you know that 90% of all online searchers only check the first page of the serps? So if your website is sitting on page 2, 3 or even lower, your website is lost in the wilderness of the internet and your competition is sitting pretty on page 1.
If you are ready to find out if a comprehensive SEO strategy, designed by a professional, can help your website to rank higher in the serps – get a free SEO site audit today.
