seolounge
What is SEO?
What is SEO, broadly and practically?
“SEO” is short for ‘search engine optimization/optimisation.’ It can also be called “online marketing” or “inbound marketing.”
In the broadest sense, SEO is the process of maximising the number of visitors to your website by ensuring it appears high in search results.
In practical terms, it is made of three components;
1. A long list of tasks performed by an SEO specialist in the website’s code which help Google’s robots understand it
2. Content that is congruent with the searches people make in Google
3. Obtaining links from social media sites and other websites (backlinks)
SEO is a way of organising a website so people can find it, and therefore find what they are looking for.
WOULD YOU OPEN A SHOP LIKE THIS?
You are not sure which location is best to service your clients, so you figure you will just open a store.
You think the most important thing is what the store looks like. So you find someone to create your signs and you build a store far away from all the other shops. Maybe out in a suburban street or maybe in the desert, but at least it looks good.
You are not sure how to organise the items in the store, so you just put them anywhere. For example, a clothes store with racks that have no order, containing shirts, skirts, and trousers, with men’s and women’s clothes all on the same rack in no particular order, and not labeled with any sizes.
You don’t tell anyone that you have opened a store and you don’t do any advertising.
It’s a funny read!
But this is the way many people create their websites, even though the aim of their website is to sell products or a service. Then they wonder why they don’t sell anything!
Nobody would open a retail store in this way, just hoping that a customer will randomly stumble across it. But every day people create websites like this and wonder why they do not get any traffic or any sales or enquiries.
The question is: do you need SEO to get people to your site? Is it the best use of your marketing budget?
You can get traffic to a website from emails, business cards, radio ads, Google and social ads, flyers, social media, etc.
You can also get business directly from referral partners, without people even going to your website. So, spend your marketing budget on the things that create customers.
SEO might be a strategy that is great, good, or a giant waste of time and money.
How do I tell if SEO is a good strategy for my business?
SEO is a brilliant strategy – if people are searching online for your business.
For some businesses, SEO is vital. If 80% of the people who want your product or service use Google as the first way to look for your business, you need SEO. However, if only 5% of people will search for you in Google, and most of them will ask their friends or family, or be referred from someone else, it would be useless to spend money on SEO. It would be better to build relationships with referral partners and target the 95%.
If you are unsure if SEO will work for you or not, please email me. I have saved countless people from wrongly investing in SEO. Many people have it in the back of their head as something they should do, when in fact they should not.
A website without SEO cannot be found by Google or other search engines.
Sometimes SEO happens by default, and in a very noncompetitive industry, your website might show on the first page of Google naturally.
However, there are only 10 places on the first page of Google. If you have more than 10 websites competing for a keyword you want to rank for, you will need to convince Google that your website should be on page 1. This is where ongoing SEO becomes important.
How do I get SEO on my website?
Most websites have a content management system (CMS) or backend, that you can access to change things on your site (e.g. words and images). If it says it is an SEO optimised CMS, this usually just means the CMS gives you the option to do SEO. It does not mean that it does it for you.
If you want us to have a look in your CMS and see if SEO is possible, please contact us.
Can my web designer do SEO?
Maybe!
There is no university training course for SEO. Everyone is self taught and/or taught by other SEOs. So, if a web designer loves SEO and does web design just so they can do SEO, it might be okay.
However, most designers only specialise in web design. So unless they have an SEO specialist working for them, your site will not be truly optimised. I have seen many design company websites claim to offer SEO, but all they do is add some keywords to your site. They do not do the proper research and create effective title tags, descriptions, internal linking or tags on the page. So, Google still can’t find your site.
Unless they have an SEO specialist, most web design companies will be doing the equivalent of creating a beautiful looking shop in a very quiet suburban street. SEO is sooo sooo much more involved than what most web designers think it is.
You can have a beautifully designed website that does not produce any results, and you can have a website that is very simple but produces huge results.
Next Steps
I understand that SEO is very confusing for most people. That is why I love to do it for you! But only if it is a good strategy for you.
You can read more about How SEO Works in my Book “How Does SEO Work“. We have a range of SEO services and SEO books ideal for businesses where SEO is important.
