What in the World is SEO?

A quick look at what you need to know about internet searches for your website

 

 

When it comes to marketing in the digital world, there are few things more important than people finding your business’s website. It’s so important that businesses have created metrics to measure just how easy it is for people to find your website. That metric is called SEO, and despite how intimidating acronyms and technical talk can be, it’s a very easy concept to understand. Let’s dive into how you can make your business easier to find online!

 

What does SEO stand for?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The definition is pretty straightforward: SEO is the process we use to make websites easy to find through search engines (like Google or Bing). When someone uses the internet to find a product or service, they’ll probably go to a page like Google and type in what they’re looking for. The moment they push the “search” button, Google’s algorithm creates a list of the best results it can find online to match up with whatever the user searched for. It’s important for your business to show up as close as possible to the top of that list.

Want to know just how important it is to be at the top of the list? Here are some stats we found:

  • 75%-90% of all traffic uses just the first page of Google results
  • 31% of all clicks go just to the first result
  • As much as 14.6% of SEO-generated leads convert into sales

Even if your product or service is superior, the numbers prove that half the battle is showing up close to the top of the list in search results. If you don’t, customers may never even know your site exists.

 

How can I get my website to rank higher in search results?

Take a deep breath; it isn’t all doom and gloom in the world of Google search. The great news is that SEO isn’t a mystery, it’s a science! Here are some straightforward “to-dos” to improve your rankings.

  1. Publish interesting and relevant content. This one is simple – think about who you want to visit your website and build the content to align with their interests or needs. It’s important to use keywords you think people might use when searching for a site like yours.
  2. Use links on your pages. Relevant links, especially those tied to good keywords, can help boost your ranking. Use links to other pages your visitors might be interested in, and link to other pages on your own website. Be sure to make these links descriptive, so the algorithm knows why they’re relevant!
  3. Keep updating your content. Google’s algorithm knows that more recent info on webpages is usually more helpful to searchers. Keeping your blog and other areas of your site fresh and full of new info is critical to help people find it.
  4. Metadata is important too – this one is trickier than some of the other factors we’ve mentioned. Metadata, in short, is data that describes the other data on your website. Google finds this by looking at the tags and headers in your website’s coding and uses them to determine whether your site is a good match to searches.

 

There are other factors that go into ranking high in Google’s search results, but these are some of the most important. Maximizing your website for SEO can be one of the most cost-effective marketing tools you can employ to boost your business. After all, Google processes somewhere between 3 and 7 billion searches a day – that’s tens of thousands every single second. People are constantly using the digital world to find goods and services from websites. It’s critically important to make sure they find yours first.

 


Here at Baer Performance Marketing, we’ve been helping businesses cut through the haze of SEO for years. We’re Google Certified, and we understand what needs to be done to optimize your site for the best results. Use our free tool on our homepage to see how your site scores on SEO, and get in touch with us today to make the most out of your website.