Why is SEO Absolutely Necessary for Your Website

SEO is a long-term method of marketing your website. It is critical for a website’s success to use SEO to build a stable audience and generate consistent leads.

Rather than naming this blog ‘What is SEO?’ I thought it would be more realistic to ask, ‘Why is SEO relevant for your website?’

If we weave some high-level SEO theory into the realistic implementation of why you need SEO for your website, the principles become clearer and simpler for me to write about!

Why SEO is so important?

• More than 70% of B2B researchers begin their purchasing process with a generic search. (Source: SearchEngine Journal)
• Before making large transactions, 89 percent of shoppers perform online testing.
• A search engine is the starting point for 93% of online interactions. (From Techjury.)

The way we buy stuff has changed dramatically in recent years, and this has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, which has disrupted our daily routines.

Example: B2C (Business to Consumer)

In 2020, you are looking for the best TV inside your price range. You then order it from the best-priced online store. If you need the TV right away, you go to the nearest store and ask them to match the price, or you order it online.

Example: B2B (Business to Business)

Consider a new industrial oven for your restaurant kitchen as a machine for your company. You study commercial oven providers (and brands) in your area and invite-only two or three of them to meet with you. The days of cold-calling sales people initiating discussions are long gone.

The preliminary part of the sales process is now handled by a company’s website. Following the testing phase, the prospect contacts prospective suppliers, having completed both initial assessments and the sales process ahead of time.

Good SEO gets you in at the beginning of the assessment process. You can’t afford to be absent while your customer needs your goods and services.

What is a Search Engine?

Google, Youtube, and Bing are the most used search engines in the Western world. Google is by far the largest and most important search engine for increasing traffic to your website.

The majority of people are unaware that Google is just an index of all the sites on the internet. This means that when you type a question into Google, it scans its own index rather than the internet. That is why Google returns search results so quickly. Google redirects you to the search result after you click on it.

The Dark Web includes website pages that are not mentioned on Google or other search engines, but that’s a topic for another blog post.

Google’s rise to the top spot as the most common and widely used search engine is due to their superior ability to provide you with the most appropriate answers to your queries.

The aim of SEO is for your website to be one of the answers provided by Google. This is where the art of SEO comes into play.

The Search Engine Results Page

After entering your search query and pressing enter, you will be guided to the Search Engine Results Page, or SERP. When doing SEO, it’s important to understand what the page is made of so that you can target various areas of the SERP.

Google SEO

The picture below, though condensed, depicts what a SERP looks like. The red and yellow parts at the top are paid for via the Google Ads network. The majority of the results are related to organic ranking, and the maps portion is a mixture of organic ranking and geographic position.

The method of rating and marketing a website for organic results is known as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). If you do SEO, your website will appear in the green and purple pages. As a rule of thumb, the higher you are on the page, the better your SEO.

The process of ranking and promoting a website through paid advertisements is known as search engine marketing (SEM) (Search Engine Marketing). If you perform SEM, you will appear in the red and yellow regions below. The higher you appear on the list for paid advertising, the more relevant your website is to the users’ search question and how much you are willing to pay for the top spot.

How do you do SEO?

SEO is a combination of many skills, we can categorise them into three categories:

1. On-page SEO
2. Off-page SEO
3. Content

Since it is a mix of excellent material and interpersonal skills, off-page SEO is the most difficult to master of the three. For most people, these are extremely difficult! I’ll go into more detail in the following paragraphs.

1. On-page SEO

On-page SEO, according to Moz, is the method of optimising elements on a website to increase search engine ranking and popularity (as opposed to connections elsewhere on the internet and other external signals, which are collectively known as “off-page SEO”).

The following elements are looked at when doing on-page SEO:

• Title Tag
• Meta Description
• Image Alt Text
• Internal Linking
• Duplicate Content
• Page Speed
• Conversion Rate Optimisation
• Domains
• URL’s
• Redirects

2. Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is described by Moz as actions taken outside of your own website that have an effect on your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). Improving search engines’ and users’ perceptions of a site’s success, importance, trustworthiness, and authority is part of optimising for off-site ranking factors.

The following elements are looked at when doing off-page SEO:

• Backlinks
• Social Media Marketing
• Guest Blogging
• Linked and unlinked brand mentions
• Influencer Marketing

Backlinks, on the other hand, are by far the most powerful factor. Backlinks come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but the three most important are:

1. Natural links: When someone links to a page on your blog, it’s because they believe it’s a useful resource.

2. Manually created links: Getting customers to connect to your site or asking influencers to share your content are examples of link-building activities.

3. Self-created links: Including a link to your website in an online directory listing, a forum post, or a blog entry. (PS: These can be dangerous, so use them with caution.)

3. Content

Google has become extremely good at determining what is high-quality original content and what isn’t. Unfortunately, the majority of online material is just that: fluff. That is why it is not ranked.

Great content that performs well with SEO relies heavily on keywords and keyword analysis. Searchers in each area use different keywords and phrases to explain what they’re looking for. You need to figure out what those keywords and phrases are if you want your SEO to rank.

The next move is to produce excellent content for that keyword/term that outperforms the top-ranked websites.

This is better said than done, as creating great content takes time. Furthermore, hiring a copywriter to write it is not always the best option unless you are an expert in your industry. Copywriters also rewrite material that already exists on the internet. It’s not really plagiarised, yet it’s also not entirely special.

Google can tell the difference between original and regurgitated material. Their artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly sophisticated. For SEO purposes, create unique content. Ask the company’s subject matter experts to write it. Hire a copywriter to polish it.

Benefits of performing SEO on your website

Do you still need SEO now that you know what it is? Isn’t it possible for you to just do SEM (paid ads)?

Some of the advantages of conducting Search Engine Optimization on your website and maintaining continuous SEO maintenance are listed below.

1. SEO is low cost when compared to paid ads

Organic SEO is a low-cost choice. It just takes a consistent commitment of time and patience on your part to create great material. You can sit back and watch the traffic roll in once you’ve climbed to the top of the organic search engine rankings. This is without the need for a monthly PPC (pay-per-click) advertisement budget, such as Google Adwords.

The problem with paid ads or PPC (pay-per-click) advertisements, such as Google Ads, is that your traffic stops as soon as your budget runs out. SEO is, in a sense, a never-ending present.

Search engines like Google index your online website content as it matures, and you build backlinks to your website pages. Your website gains authority on the particular theme or focus area as a result of people linking to it.

As a result, there will be more organic website traffic. This is accomplished by improving your website’s keyword rankings.

2. SEO builds higher brand credibility & authority

When entering a keyword or search phrase into search engines like Google, many people trust the first search result they see. They consider businesses that score well on search engines like Google to be trustworthy. As a result of SEO, your website becomes a trustworthy brand.

Google filters web content using strict content standards that are updated on a regular basis. The search engine’s algorithm updates determine when and where a top-ranking site appears. When users perform searches, they will obtain the most appropriate results. Users trust Google’s top-ranking performance because of this. And why do these pages have so much more prestige than sites with lower rankings?

3. Your website needs to be on the first page of Google organically

The majority of people never go beyond the first page of a search engine. When was the last time you went to the second page of search results? This means you’re missing out on future clicks and overall organic brand recognition if your website doesn’t appear on the first page of Google or other search engines.

By ranking on the first page of search engine results, you can count on a steady stream of organic website traffic.

You begin to build your brand as a leader in your field by rising to the top of the first list.

4. Access to data allows you to leverage content for organic lead generation at no cost

You will see what goods and services visitors are interested in by looking at your website analytics. You will also see what search words and keywords they used to locate your website via search engines. This exercise will show you where your content is lacking.

Both websites have content holes, and if you can fill those gaps for your potential clients before your rivals, you’ll get the leads.

This form of customer data is extremely important, and tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console make it simple to obtain. Using this information to your benefit would be extremely helpful to your website in the long run.

5. Good results require minimal upkeep when it comes to SEO and long-term benefits

As opposed to pay-per-click (PPC) ads such as Google Adwords, the benefits of SEO are more long-term and do not stop paying off when the budget runs out.

Your SEO results will be long-lasting unless you use what we call black-hat SEO techniques, which are SEO techniques that are frowned upon. Black-hat techniques could result in your website being removed from Google’s index in the next algorithm update. It’s important to stay up with the latest updates from Google and SEO experts and professionals.

When it comes to maintaining SEO and maintaining top rankings on search engine results, there is, of course, some maintenance. Content must be updated on a regular basis, as well as technical website and SEO fixes.

When you regularly practise good SEO, however, it will be difficult for rivals to outperform you.

6. Your competitors may already be committed to SEO and understand its benefits.

Now that you’ve learned about the advantages of SEO and how useful it is, you should be aware that some of your rivals have already jumped on board and are reaping the benefits.

If your rivals are ranking on Google, you must play catch-up and ensure that your website content is optimised for the right keywords. If they aren’t using SEO, take advantage of their lack of attention and use the opportunity to travel further away from them online.

Start with long-tail keyword opportunities that bring in small amounts of website traffic and work your way up. For example, rather than ‘legal consulting services,’ target ‘Best legal consulting services in Johannesburg.’

Final thoughts on SEO

Taking all into account, if you are not consistently optimising your website both on-page and off-page to fit well with search engines, you are restricting your website’s success capacity.

Following through with some simple organic SEO could be extremely beneficial to your business. While organic reach on digital channels such as social and search is declining, the benefits listed above show that SEO can provide significant long-term benefits to your business.

61 percent of marketers claim their main inbound marketing goal is strengthening SEO and increasing their organic presence. (HubSpot). Add in the fact that SEO produces more leads than any other marketing strategy, according to 57 percent of B2B marketers. SEO should continue to be a top priority for your website.