Search Engine Optimization, commonly known as SEO, is a practice of improving your website traffic in both quality and quantity. By optimizing your website content and design you are making your site more visible and attractive to search engines and gaining organic traffic. This leads to more exposure as well as more opportunities to convert visitors to clients.

So what does this actually mean? Finding organic traffic means people who come to your website by searching for something related to what you’re offering or selling. This is free, unpaid traffic coming from search engines and not from ads. The quality of your traffic means that people who are visiting are there for a good reason, that your SEO is good and that the search engine recognizes what you are providing, so the right type of people can be sent to your website. And of course, there is quantity – the more interested visitors come to your page, the better because it increases your chances to influence them to make a decision and interact or buy from you.

Most important aspects of SEO

Keywords

• Keywords are very important for SEO – using carefully researched and well-chosen keywords makes it easier for search engines to identify your website as relevant
• They should be precise and specific, words that are commonly used for the service or product you are providing, and used early in the text, as a heading or within the first paragraphs of your descriptions
• Search for commonly used words and local expressions, as well as specific descriptive phrases which can help you reach your target audience
• Avoid over-using your keywords, as this can badly affect your SEO and decrease your rating – don’t push them into every paragraph and repeat them constantly

Content

• Your content is what will help you reach and engage with target audiences
• Aim to post educational and interesting content, things that are engaging and shareable, and which help your audience solve their problems or feel like you understand them
• Content can be text on your webpage, videos, photos, links, infographics, social media posts or any other information which is relevant and useful
• Have clear headings and text paragraphs, but also descriptive tags and alt text in the programming of your pages – and make sure you don’t have duplicated content – everything needs to serve a purpose and be well-chosen
• Unique headings and content help you stand out, but they should stay relevant and clear, with your keywords included

On-page SEO

• These are elements on your page that you have control over and can work on improving to increase your SEO rating
• Use a clear and easy design that makes it easy for both clients and search engines to scan through them and identify the most relevant information
• Create internal links between your pages, linking pages between them and making it easy to navigate the website – this helps users find their way more easily but also improves your SEO
• Make sure your site is mobile-friendly – it should be clear and easy to use from any device, no matter if it is a desktop, tablet or mobile phone

Off-page SEO

• This includes external optimization from other websites such as using backlinks that lead back to your site
• The quality of backlinks is important – having a lot of other sites linking back to you can be very valuable for your SEO, but getting those shares from influencers or more popular websites and companies can make your page be considered more relevant and as having more authority
• You can try to do this by creating blogs or infographics which will be very interesting and shared a lot by other websites
• Producing quality content helps your website to become more shareable and slowly increases your SEO

SEO has many important functions, the first one being visibility. This is an important part of what makes your website easier to find for potential clients and helps you show them what you have to offer. It also increases web traffic to your page and helps your ranking among other pages on the search engine results page. Good SEO also helps you show your website as relevant and trustworthy, as someone who offers high-quality information but also creates a more positive and optimized customer experience throughout your website.

If you want to dive deeper into SEO, there are many guides and instructions available online, and Google even has its own SEO Starter Guide which you can find here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/seo-starter-guide.

SEO is important no matter which business you are in – it can help you achieve business goals and build better relationships with clients. Driving more interested prospects to your site is the first step, and this helps you build a good base for further conversations and interactions, providing high value to loyal clients and ensuring more sales and growth for your business.