In today’s world, being searchable is integral for success. You might think having an excellent product or service is good enough, but that’s only step one. You also need to be searchable by your target audience. Here is a solution. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important step to take in order to be easily found by your target audience. Here at Technoholic, we view SEO as more than a marketing technique. It’s an investment to establish and grow your audience. With that in mind, we designed this guide to teach you everything you need to know to get you, and your audience, started with SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a technique to develop your website so your audience can find you easily with search engines. A well implemented SEO strategy can give your audience the ability to find you easily on search engines for a long stretch of time, and for free, versus the cost of using ads. Using ads is a temporary solution to get your audience to find you.
SEO is an investment. Here at Technoholic, we understand that using digital marketing is the most cost-effective solution for your business.
Google and other search engines create complex algorithms that organize and rate web pages by countless individual components. While there is no way to know or predict the exact algorithms, SEO revolves around three components.
The first is Crawling. Search engine bots continuously scan the web, following links to discover new and updated content.
The second is Indexing. Once content is discovered and Crawled, it is categorized for future reference in the search engine’s database.
The third is Ranking. When a user inputs a query, the search engine retrieves and ranks all relevant pages based on the results.
SEO aims to provide search engines with the simplest way to understand web pages and query search results. This is the approach Technoholic employs with all our customers.
Three categories make up the whole of SEO, and each is indispensable to search performance.
The individual pages of a site can be optimized to attract more relevant traffic. This is referred to as On-Page SEO. Several aspects make up On-Page SEO. These aspects can also be referred to as Keyword Optimization and Content Quality.
Off-page SEO consists of the efforts made beyond the boundaries of your own website to improve your ranking through the cultivation of authority and trust.
The primary focus of Technical SEO is the back end of your site’s architecture and ensuring that search engines can easily crawl and index your content.
At Technoholic, we highlight the importance of all three of these pillars of SEO and how ignoring any one of them can adversely affect the overall SEO strategy.
Once you stop paying for ads, the traffic you earned through SEO will continue to come for free, making it much more efficient from a costs standpoint.
A perceived higher trust by users can be the difference of whether or not they complete a desired action on your website.
SEO targets users that already want or need the information, products, or services you can provide.
Common best practices for SEO directly translate to good performance for your page.
Once other companies realize the value of SEO, they are less likely to replace you in search results.
Once you have SEO, your content marketing, social media, and even ads will work significantly better.
Creating an SEO strategy is a continual engagement and gives clients a sustainable edge over the competition beyond one-time use. This is how Technoholic approaches the creation of an SEO strategy.
The very first step of any SEO strategy is to understand the target audience’s search. This involves more than just understanding the most popular keywords. It is also about recognizing the user’s search intent in order to determine if the searches are more of an information, navigation, or transaction focus.
This is a foundation check that must occur if content is to be adequately created. It inspects the crawl, link, content, and page speed errors in addition to mobile usability.
Faster results are typically a product of the auditing and improvement of already existing pages rather than the continuation of the content creation cycle. Efforts should be focused on the improvement of the targeting of information and the depth of the content.
The creation of quality content is what addresses the majority of user needs and the competition. The best content is the most valuable and insightful in relation to the questions asked and is more informative than other content.
Creating genuinely link-worthy content is a part of digital PR, guest posting, and partnerships.
This is critical for businesses that service specific geographic areas. Local citations, content creation, and Google Business Profile optimization are some of the tactics you can use to attract customers in your local area.
SEO is something that should be ongoing. This includes things like tracking rankings for certain keywords as well as tracking organic traffic and conversion data.
Sometimes well thought out SEO efforts can actually miss the target as a result of errors. At Technoholic, we see companies a lot with:
An inclination to be flexible with strategy and dedicated with ongoing learning is essential for keeping up with changing search engine algorithms.
Rather than focusing on technical tricks, search engines are prioritizing UX and content. Google places a heavy focus on E-E-A-T to encourage content to be written with experience instead of just answering a search query.
Additionally, ranking signals are highly correlated with UX, with a heavy focus on page speed, interactivity, and layout stability.
This is why Technoholic prioritizes the user in their SEO methodology. Technoholic not only seeks to satisfy the demands of search engines, but also build a more enriching experience for actual site users.
AI began its foray into SEO on both the marketer’s side, and the side of search engines, in the area of content ranking. Search engines are starting to apply AI to better understand, not just the language in a search, but the searcher’s intent and the context of the content and search.
For marketers, AI has begun to automate large sections of their work by providing tools to conduct research for keywords, analyze performance data and create content. This, of necessity, has created a more competitive content environment. With the introduction of sophisticated AI, search engines have begun to distinguish high quality, original content from lazy or uncreative content. At Technoholic, we ensure our content is valuable, accurate, and written by a human, despite leveraging AI.
The metrics below should indicate the success of an SEO strategy:
The importance of periodically checking these metrics is that businesses can learn what is successful, what can be improved, and how they can better their SEO strategy to ensure continuous growth.
Lasting success with SEO goes beyond the simple application of techniques. It involves planning and writing good quality content that will keep up with the changes that will inevitably happen with search engine algorithms. At Technoholic, we begin with the client and their audience and write quality content with the assistance of a clear plan, analytics, and data.
Instead of using a generic SEO strategy, we thoroughly investigate the level of competition a business has, the keywords they wish to target, and what goals they would like to achieve in order to create a personalized SEO strategy. When coupled with continuous performance evaluation and clear outcome reporting, our strategy helps businesses achieve steady growth of website traffic without the use of erroneous risky SEO strategies.
The value of Search Engine Optimization as a business investment is apparent when a business is able to garner web traffic that converts and market the business beyond basic ranking metrics. The challenge is achieving the right balance that prioritizes the end user between the various metrics of search engine optimization.
If you’re a small company looking to launch the first stage of having an online presence or an already established business focusing on having an edge on your competition, then learning about the basics of SEO is a necessary step in the right direction for sustainable success in digital business.
SEO is an important strategy for growth and development of your business, and having an experienced partner like Technoholic will help your business make the best of the opportunities that SEO has to offer.