SEO – What Is It and Why You Need It

by | May 10, 2019 | Information Technology

What do you do when you have to look for a product or service and need quick answers?

You search for it on Google.

And just like that, you have a trove of results that cater to your inquiry, no matter how general or specific it may seem. But as easy as the action is to you on the surface, it goes deeper in its functionality.

The way you google an inquiry, the list of websites that is delivered by the search engine results, and the order these websites are listed all have the technical mechanisms of SEO (search engine optimization) working behind them.

For example, if you search for “restaurants in LA”, then the top results that appear are from restaurants whose websites are search engine friendly. These are sites which were presented to Google in a way that allowed it to associate them with “restaurants” and “LA” better than other websites in the same industry.

That’s what can be achieved through SEO.

What is SEO and Why Do You Need It?

If you have recently started a business of any kind, or have not been getting enough website traffic for an older business, then it would be time to look at your website from an SEO perspective.

This is because SEO is the primary way to set up your website for establishing a presence on the web, and to drive traffic by appearing on search engine results. If your website is to become a successful entity and turn your business into a profitable venture, then SEO is quite crucial for it.

As the name suggests, SEO or search engine optimization is the practice to ensure that your website is search engine friendly. It makes it easier for search engines to understand your website, its target industry, its purpose in the market, and the value that it can bring to its visitors. This can help you obtain higher rankings on search engine results, which in turn can drive higher traffic to your website.

It Bridges the Gap Between Websites and Search Engines

While website themes, images, banners and other visual cues can strike a chord with your human users, they won’t do any good when your website has to be understood by search engines.

This is because search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo cannot perceive a website the way human visitors can. They cannot go by visual cues, and cannot assess how credible a website is or how helpful its navigation could be for its visitors just by looking at it.

That is why, search engines rely upon textual, structural and technical cues to understand what a website may look like to a human visitor. When a website makes use of SEO, its relevance allows these search engines to decide whether it should rank higher on any results against keywords that its target audience might be searching for.

It Goes Beyond Website Setup

SEO is not restricted to only setting up a website for the search engines, but to establish its credibility to them.

While structural changes such as your website content, HTML structure, and setup of targeted geolocations paints a picture of what your website does and is trying to achieve, demonstrating how effectively it achieves those objectives is another story.

That is where SEO involves a holistic marketing approach. This ensures that your site is not only set up structurally for the search engines to see, but also to send them marketing signals that show how credible your website can be for its visitors.

This is achieved through practices such as high quality backlinks, keyword-rich yet search engine-compliant content, and social media outreach. All of this tells search engines that your website is a credible entity that is making efforts to gain traction in its industry. And this provides your website with the credibility for it to rank higher on search results.

How Can You Implement SEO for Your Site?

Since SEO is a very intricate process that involves an abundance of technical knowledge and networking, it is essential for you to hire professionals who knows exactly how to guide your website through a path of success.

Conventional marketing experts make use of an effective PR image, billboards, TV spots and on-the-ground activities to enhance a brick-and-mortar business’ presence. Similar to them, SEO experts make use of an on-site structure, captivating off-site content, online outreach and brand awareness techniques to make sure that your website obtains the foothold that it requires.

In order to check how your website can be optimized for SEO and how it can maintain an established process on a consistent basis, feel free to reach out to us and discuss your options today. We would love to hear from you and answer any questions that you may have.