Every day, the world gets more digital than it was the previous day. As a matter of fact, the world we live in today may have been impossible for people a century ago to imagine. That is because it is a lot different, and technology has changed so much and is still changing a lot of things.
Thanks to products of technology like Shopify, people can now run profitable stores completely online. While this is no longer news in today’s world, it did not even exist a few decades ago! These platforms have simplified the whole process, so much so that online store owners never even have to package orders, let alone deliver them. Click here to learn more about Shopify.
Brick-and-mortar businesses are not left out of the benefits of technology and the internet. There is hardly any serious-minded company without a functional website that displays basic information about them. Through websites and proper SEO, companies open themselves up to more customers, not just from around their geographical location but also from around the world.
This is all thanks to the internet as it has made the world a lot smaller. Thanks to the internet, the world is more connected than it has ever been, and many businesses are taking advantage of this to turn in huge profits.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization which is a term that is incredibly popular among companies and businesses that have some form of an online presence. In its most basic meaning, SEO is the continuous method of improving a website to increase and strengthen its visibility when people search online using words that are related to the website. In other words, SEO is what is needed for your website to show up when potential customers search for products and/or services that are like yours.
To further explain this, let’s look at an example. When a user runs a search on a search engine like Google or Bing for say, “dog treats”, for example, a bunch of stuff shows up on the results page. Now, usually, 9/10 times, the first three websites that show up are very relevant to the search query.
Why is that? The answer is quite simple. Those websites have been optimized to show up for searches relating to dogs, especially dog food. So, in other words, these websites are doing SEO right. SEO is one of the best ways to grow your brand or company organically, that is, without paid advertising.
How Does it Work?
SEO is a very complicated topic but for the benefit of this article, we’ll try to simplify it as much as possible. While a basic understanding of the concept may not be enough to get your site where you want it to be, it should help when hiring an SEO scholar or expert.
Search engines make use of bots to crawl and index web pages. These bots crawl web pages to determine what they are about and the type of information they carry before they are indexed. Think of the index as a giant online library. Like how a physical library works, the search engine (librarian), helps users (customers) to find the books (web pages) that are relevant to their search queries or keywords (requests). Visit this site to learn more about keywords.
Once a search is initiated, the search engine goes through all the web pages it has crawled and indexed and brings out the web pages that are most relevant to the entered keyword. The results made available to the user are then ranked from the most relevant to the least relevant. That is, the order of relevance decreases as you go down the displayed results. This explains why most users never go beyond the first search engine result page (SERP).
On hiring an expert, you would be better of hiring one within your locality. If your business is in Chicago, for example, don’t you think hiring an expert from a reputable agency like Chicago SEO Scholar would make more sense than hiring one from say, New York? With the expert close to you, you can meet and discuss any problems easily. While it is true that these meetings can be held virtually, many people still prefer physical meetings. If you are one of such people, this is something you’d want to give some thought to.
Why is SEO Important?
As we said earlier, the world is more connected than ever, thanks to the internet. With websites, companies now have access to potential clients from all around the world. But for businesses to benefit from all this, their websites must first be seen by these potential customers, don’t they?
Now, one might wonder why or how that may be a problem. The website is live on the web and accessible to everyone. You see, lack of visibility is one problem that many businesses suffer from when it comes to the success of their website. Why? Because there are hundreds of other businesses like yours that also have websites.
Now, this is a problem because if your website is not properly optimized to show up for keywords related to your business, customers will not find you. It really is that simple. So, SEO is important because it is the best way to organically make your website visible to potential customers. Read this article to learn more about why organic marketing is important for your business.
If you run an online store, for example, you cannot afford to not be working on your site’s SEO. The beautiful thing about SEO is that websites that get it right, enjoy more than ten times more traffic than those with poor SEO.
This is because most users believe that the first result that shows up is the most genuine and reliable. In clearer terms, most users trust search engines to show only the most reputable and reliable business first. What this means is that if you do not appear on the first result page, you may only be getting customers that searched specifically for you.
Final Thoughts
If you are yet to incorporate SEO into your marketing effort, you are missing out on traffic that can easily be converted to paying customers. When it comes to online businesses, usually, the more traffic you get, the greater your chances of making more sales and turning in a profit.
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