What Is SEO?
SEO is short for “Search Engine Optimization”. It is any activity that strives to improve your website and content’s ranking on search engine results when people search for keywords related to your business. SEO can be hard to understand because the term is founded on a goal, not any specific plan of action. In fact, there are an infinite number of SEO strategies out there, and digital marketers are constantly coming up with new SEO Strategies that can differentiate their website and content from the millions (sometimes billions) of competitors ranking for your targeted keywords and keyphrases.
The goal of SEO is to make changes to a website, and/or webpage, with the intention of improving the ranking(s) on search engines… Like Google, Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, etc. There are many different tasks that can be performed to accomplish this, but not every task will benefit every website.
More Information About What is SEO
Table of Contents:
How does SEO help your business grow?
Benefits of Professional SEO Help
The benefits of hiring an SEO Specialist?
How Does SEO Help Your Business Grow?
Search Engine Optimization is “free” to implement! But it requires time and technical knowledge to execute. It is the foundation of growing your website presence and increasing traffic from search engines like Google™. Because of how competitive and specific search engine results are these days, traffic from organic search results are usually the highest quality traffic your website can receive.
Unlike paid advertising strategies, the traffic resulting from SEO sticks around. SEO can take 3 month to 6 months to gain traction and realize significant results. That traffic though, will be better targeted for your website than paid channels. One year of consistent SEO efforts can put your website to the forefront of almost any industry… Especially if your business is locally focused.
Benefits of Professional SEO Help
SEO is like car maintenance. Everyone knows they need to constantly maintain a car. They don’t always know how to do it though. Everyone knows they need to optimize their website for search engines, but rarely do they understand the wide range of tasks involved. You must also have enough experience to be able to prioritize which tactics are most needed for your website, and which strategies are most effective. The kicker is that search engines like Google™ are constantly updating the search algorithm for ranking results, and websites are expected to adapt or lose traffic.
Save Time:
While SEO is technically “free”, it costs a lot of time and mental energy. If you already find yourself scraping for free time to take care of your business… Then you may not have the time to properly implement SEO for your website. By hiring a professional, you will be able to keep your time for operating your business and giving clients pleasant experiences.
Fast-Track Better Results:
Chances are that if you attempt to implement SEO on your own… You will be putting your website and yourself through a “learning curve”. This “learning curve” will not only be ineffective… It will likely signal Google that your website is not managed by professionals. This will put you further behind and lengthen the amount of time need to gain initial traction with search engine rankings. With paid help, you can effectively get the ball rolling from day one. Improving search engine rankings and avoid unforeseeable issues and errors.
Tools & Knowledge:
By hiring a paid professional, you will save money on the monthly subscriptions for SEO related tools / software: Such as Moz, SEMrush, SpyFu, HubSpot, etc. SEO softwares can run up a monthly bill of over $500/month with just one or two. Your paid help will already have access to all of these things and is able to eat that cost for you.
Education:
You will also have someone you can call when you have questions related to the SEO on your website. This process will educate you on the do and don’ts of SEO so that you can be more knowledgeable. This education is very valuable to you as a business owner and will benefit you for much longer than the paid help, itself.
More ways an SEO Expert can help your business grow
The Indirect Benefits of Hiring an SEO Specialist?
Initial review:
The first thing any professional SEO specialist will do for you is perform an initial review of your entire website and internet brand presence. This includes figuring out which keywords you already rank for… Which keywords you are trying to rank for… And keyword ranking opportunities that can provide either quality traffic, or a significant volume of traffic. This service alone provides very valuable insights. This can help you clarify your business messaging on both digital and non-digital channels.
Persistent Optimization and Testing:
Persistence is one of the most critical factors of success in the world of SEO. How often you are adjusting your website and marketing channels is an independent factor that Google considers when ranking websites. A website that is never optimized is considered by Google™ to be “stale”. Meaning it is unable to keep up with the demand and needs of people searching on there website.
Analysis and Reporting:
Similar to the initial review, analysis of your website is required of a specialist to be effective and stay current with the times. The indirect benefit of this is that you have someone constantly doing a basic security review of your website. If anything gets hacked, or your website breaks because your server’s programming code hasn’t been updated, your paid SEO specialist will more than likely be the first one to notice and will report it to you so that it can be taken care of in a timely manner. You will also have periodic reports sent to you on the overall performance of your website and Search Engine Rankings that you should keep for future reference. These reports will become your historical data collection that can help you make business decisions in the future.