No matter what kind of business you own or what level of digital marketing you want to pursue, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you have probably heard quite a bit about. If you’re wondering what Search Engine Optimization is, you’re in the right place.

Continue reading to learn more about why SEO is important, how it works, and how to improve yours.

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is a marketing technique that expands a company’s visibility in organic search results. As a result, the company’s website receives more traffic, increasing the likelihood that more visitors will convert into customers and dollars.

Why Is SEO Important?

Businesses should invest in SEO because it gives them the visibility they need in the digital age to draw in customers. Brands without a strong online presence will find themselves falling behind the competition because 81% of consumers conduct online searches before making a purchase.

Moreover, SEO helps your rank in search engines. When 81% of consumers search online before making a purchase, and 75% of internet users don’t scroll past the first page of results, you’re losing business to competitors if you’re not on the first page.

How Does SEO Work?

For your SEO strategies to work, your website must undergo certain design and content changes that make it more appealing to search engines. You take these actions in the hope that the search engine will list your website as the first result on the results page.

When determining which websites to display in the search results and in what order, Google’s algorithm takes into account hundreds of ranking factors. Although it is impossible to change your website to accommodate every user, there are a number of best practices you can adhere to.

Tips to Improve SEO

The first step in raising a site’s search rankings is understanding how search engines operate. The next step is to take that knowledge and optimize your site for search by trying a few of these techniques:

1. Improve your website’s loading speed – With Google’s PageSpeed insights, you can test how quickly your website loads on desktop and mobile devices.
2. Optimize your existing content – The quickest way to increase your site’s SEO is frequently by updating your website’s current content.
3. Create new content based on low-competition keywords – Choose long-tail keywords with low difficulty and target question search terms to reduce competition and make it simpler to rank.
4. Optimize images – When properly placed on your website, optimized images can aid in increasing traffic and show Google your site is accessibility-friendly.
5. Ensure your site is mobile-friendly – Now, Google only counts the mobile version of your site in its index. Test your site’s mobile-friendliness with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
6. Use internal linking – By strategically using internal links, authority can be sent from one page to another, helping those pages that most need it.
7. Improve Local SEO – Local SEO is crucial if you provide services in a particular region, sometimes even more so than “regular” SEO.

When you first begin, optimizing your site can be difficult. RoundTable experts are available to relieve you of the SEO burden so you can concentrate on expanding your company. Contact us today to learn how we can help.