I’m back, and this week in #wwudigimark, we’re talking about search engines, but more specifically, SEO. Have you ever wondered why it was so important that you typing the correct words into Google’s search engine matters? Read on to find out how one word can make all the difference when you’re dying to find the right answer to your ever-persistent questions.

SEO

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO), is the practice of increasing quantity and quality of your website’s traffic. It is also the exposure of your brand through organic search engine results. So, it is bringing consumers and awareness to your website through optimizing the spot that your website will rank when someone searches for your product/service on a search engine. Does your page show up in the top spot on the first page of Google? Well, if it does, then you are performing some great SEO.

Why is it important?

SEO is important because it allows your website to have more visibility without having to pay for it to appear at the top of Google. Organic search results through a search engine cover more digital space than paid ads. Also, most people don’t click on paid ads. Therefore, it is important to use SEO to boost your website’s presence on search engines. SEO assists in building brand awareness and relationships with present and potential consumers. While it may seem like all of the modifications that you are making to your site may be small, they add up to equaling large improvements. SEO is critical in maintaining visibility, however, it is important to do it correctly to maximize the exposure that your website receives.

How do you do it?

While it is not an exact science on how to perform SEO, it is critical to do it correctly so that the website can maximize its visibility without deceiving consumers. The most important parts when performing SEO are:

Keywords are important because putting in the correct words will greatly increase your chance at being seen

Content helps in engaging your audience and helps you reach the broadest audience possible

Off-Page SEO helps external optimization that happens when people are not necessarily on your site

Local SEO is important because 57% of all searches are from mobile and they are looking for something local, whether that be a restaurant, bar, hair salon, or grocery store.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is important because it shows ads that are paid for. This includes Google Adwords, Google shopping ads, display ads, and more.

It is critical that by trying to optimize your website, you do not deceive consumers in the process. Google has a guide to effectively performing SEO, and in it, it advises that you follow a few basic principles:

• Making pages primarily for users, not search engines
• Don’t deceive your users
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whenever you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website to a Google employee.
  • Another useful test is to ask “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?
• Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging

The ability to effectively perform SEO was coined by Google: EAT. This stands for:

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

This is another way to ensure that you are effectively performing SEO. Having a high-quality page will be measured by having a high level of EAT as a quality evaluation.

Mozlow’s Hierarchy of SEO Needs

MOZlow’s Hierarchy was created by Rand Fishkin, founder of MOZ. He designed it to explain the steps necessary to effectively using SEO. If utilized correctly, this gives the necessary steps to effectively utilizing SEO for a website.

Link Building

What is Link Building?

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. Just like a spider, Search engines are essentially using these hyperlinks to crawl the web between links of individual pages on your website and also links between entire websites as a whole. This is very difficult for SEO specialists because it is hard to do well and hard to do effectively to give your website a competitive edge.

Link Building and SEO

Link building is important in SEO because search engines use links in two ways.

1.    To discover new web pages

2.    To help determine how well a page should rank in their results

If the links do not signal that they would be useful to answering the question, then they will not be able to use those links to direct others to your website. If the link does not signal to the search engine that it will sufficiently answer the question or be a useful resource to a person, then it will not be ranked well.

Important Issues in the World of SEO in 2020

According to Search Engine Watch, there are 8 trends in 2020 that may be difficult for all SEO.

1.   Voice search

• People search as they speak making it difficult to correctly identify keywords.

2.    Featured snippits will continue to dominate search results

• Search engines may display the featured snippit over the organic and paid result because of convenience.

3.   Leveraging Influencers for SEO

• Much of a budget for some companies is spent on “influencers”. They have a lot of power in terms of visibility of a product or service.

4.    BERT Won’t Leave

• Affects queries and question’s that are asked

5.  People Want Digital Experiences

• Pages will not load as fast hindering the patience of a potential consumer.

6.    Video=Content King

• Video is 50% more likely to show up for a search result first.

7.    Content Length

• Only high-quality content will beat page 1 ranking.

8.    Mobile Search

• Mobile Search will increase as more people depend on their mobile devices to surf the web.

Conclusion

SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing that can potentially make or break your website’s success. Having the ability to improve the position of your website so that it is being seen by a large audience is important because it allows the company the ability to effectively communicate to an audience before they even know that they have a question. I hope that this blog has allowed you to see and understand the importance of SEO and what a necessity it is for a business. Next, we will be talking about voice and local search, so I’ll see you next time for the next blog in #wwudigimark!