As a business owner or marketing, you have undoubtedly heard of the initialism SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is a principle digital marketing practice that is essential for all businesses to perform in today’s age. That said, performing proper SEO requires a skilled understanding of search engines. Because of this high barrier to entry, many businesses prefer to hire an SEO agency as opposed to hiring a full-time staff.
SEO is just one facet of digital marketing, but it may be the most critical. Other digital marketing efforts, like ads, can be very hit or miss. For example, a brand can have a series of poor ads before having one that “goes viral” and is considered effective. In contrast, SEO is permanent and has a lasting impact on your brand’s identity.
What is SEO
In a brief definition, SEO is the process of optimizing your website to rank atop a search engine’s results page. A good SEO agency will be able to look at your website and identify a few key aspects that will improve SEO. These include elements such as your target keywords, your title tags and meta descriptions, and how many backlinks your site has.
Keywords are important elements of your website because they represent a brief description of your business. For example, if you are a retailer of imported bicycles in Penang, one of your keywords should be “imported bicycles Penang”.
In order for Google to match your keywords to your website, the keywords need to be included in your site content with frequency. Too few times, and Google won’t recognize them; too many times, and Google will think you are trying to trick it. Striking the right balance is a service an SEO agency can provide.
You will also want to include your target keywords in your meta description, which is the brief description of your webpage that appears on Google. Meta descriptions are often the first thing people read when interacting with your business online, emphasizing their importance and need to be optimized.
Backlinks are links to your website that appear on other webpages. In Google’s eyes, the more backlinks you have, the more valuable your website must be. Building backlinks takes a dedicated team of specialists to reach out to other websites and find a way to get your link on their page. This is called outreach, and any good SEO agency will have an outreach department.
SEO Takes Time, But It’s Free
Optimizing content, building backlinks, and improving ranking on Google does not happen overnight. In fact, SEO can take months before results start to come in. While this may seem like a long time, it is important to remember that SEO and digital marketing is a long-term game that all of your competitors are playing. Success today does not ensure success tomorrow.
Because of the competitive nature of SEO, your business needs to constantly be improving, tweaking, and enhancing your SEO activities. This can be time-consuming, but performing SEO is free. THough while SEO agencies do charge for their services, their expertise will save you time and money on hiring an in-house staff to work full time on SEO.
