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Introduction
What is SEO optimisation? Search Engine Optimisation involves editing a website’s content, structure, and online presence to improve search engine results page (SERP) ranking.
It includes keyword research, on-page optimisation, link building, and technical SEO.
SEO can increase website traffic, conversions and sales.
While numerous search engines exist, we will focus on Google.
Google captures 92% of the global search engine market share, with Bing at 2.5% and Yahoo at 1.5%.
What is SEO optimisation?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, which is the process of getting traffic from free, organic, editorial, or natural search results in search engines. It aims to improve your website’s position in search results pages (SERPs). Remember, the higher the website is listed, the more people will see it.
SEO is no longer confined to search engines like Google. It’s also important for social networks such as YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and Instagram as people turn to social media to find information.
While SEO changes frequently in small ways, its key principles do not. There are three pillars of SEO:
Technical Optimisation: completing activities on your site that are designed to improve SEO but are not related to content.
On-Page Optimisation: ensuring the content on your site is relevant and provides a great user experience.
Off-Page Optimisation: enhancing your site’s search engine rankings through activities outside of the site. This is largely driven by backlinks, which help to build the site’s reputation.
Why is SEO Important?
You need an SEO strategy. The top three search results on Google receive 75.1% of all clicks.
In other words, go for gold, silver or bronze. Anything else is a loss.
SEO increases website visibility, traffic and conversions.
SEO can also be used to improve brand awareness, build relationships with prospective clients and establish your authority and trustworthiness.
SEO needs to be an integral part of any eCommerce marketing strategy. You should develop a separate SEO strategy for each product and product type. Targeting your SEO based on geography and demography is essential to ensure you are rivalling your competitors in each market.
Ranking high on Amazon’s search engine is also essential for eCommerce businesses. 52% of product purchases on the internet are made through Amazon. This is why SEO is important.
SEO is no longer confined to search engines like Google. It’s also important for social networks such as YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and Instagram as people turn to social media to find information.
SEO Techniques
SEO is a complicated business but there are a few search engine optimisation techniques that everyone can do to maximise sales through their website:
- Include keywords in the page title
- Ensure the web page loads quickly
- Make your content helpful and reliable
- Create high quality backlinks
- Produce content relevant to your target audience
- Design a mobile-friendly website
Other SEO techniques include:
Blogging
A blog is a great way to help your website rank higher on Google. It also allows you engage with your audience through edutainment.
Make sure the content is helpful, relevant and includes keywords.
Be careful with blogging. It can be incredibly time consuming. Try to reuse the content by cutting it up into social media posts and maybe start an email newsletter that contains each blog post.
A/B Testing
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a marketing experiment where you split your audience to test variations on a campaign and determine which performs better. In other words, you can show version A of a piece of marketing content to one half of your audience and version B to another.
A/B testing should be used for all forms of content marketing from blog posts to social media posts but it is particularly helpful in SEO. It’s important to only pick one variable to test otherwise it will be unclear why one approach was more or less successful.
A/B testing can be used to improve ecommerce websites. E-commerce businesses see an average of 70% of customers leave their website with items in their shopping cart. This is known as “shopping cart abandonment” and is detrimental to any online store.
Using A/B testing to improve product images, product descriptions and website UI/UX can greatly improve your bottom line
SEA
Search Engine Advertising (SEA) offers benefits to small and large businesses, including:
- Instant traffic: Traffic can roll in as soon as your ads go live
- Advanced targeting: Brands can target specific demographics, interests, and behaviours
- Performance measurement: Ad platforms offer detailed analytics that advertisers can mine for insights
- Affordability: Even brands with small budgets can launch ads to reach their target audience
Paid ads enable even small businesses with no brand recognition to reach new audiences.
Benefits of SEO
Visibility and Rankings
25% of people have never clicked past the first page of Google. Increasing visibility is essential.
Visibility involves making it easier for prospects to find you when they search for something you have to offer. Visibility is directly related to your ranking. The more effective your SEO efforts, the higher your ranking and the better your visibility.
Web Traffic
The top result on Google receives 32% of all clicks and every increase in ranking place improves clicks by 30%.
Increased web traffic is one of the main goals of SEO, and you increase traffic when you increase visibility and rankings.
A featured snippet often appears above the first ranked website. This is usually content that’s taken from a landing page on a blog that answers a question people are searching for and massively boost your clicks. To achieve this, you need to rank number one.
Authority
Page Authority (PA) is increasingly important to search engines as it’s becoming more important to web users. Essentially, authority means that your website is trustworthy, high quality, relevant, and has something to offer.
Establishing authority is not just important for SEO but also for your brand awareness and trust.
Creating a Better Visitor Experience
Another benefit of SEO is that all your great content and on-page SEO improves the usability of your site. This creates a seamless and positive customer experience.
Improving your site’s responsiveness will make it mobile-friendly. By increasing your page load speed, you’ll reduce your bounce rate and encourage visitors to spend longer on your site. Consumers expect a page to load in less than three seconds.
Conclusion
Jeff Bezos said: “Treat Google like a mountain. You can climb the mountain but you cannot move it.”
ChatGPT made of molehill of that mountain. “Usage of ChatGPT at work is averaging around 30 times higher than that of Bard.” (Cyberhaven)
The future of SEO and indeed Google is uncertain. Have you started using AI to replace search engines? Comment below.
Plus: Our free SEO website audit gives you simple, actionable steps to improve your SEO. We also compare you to your competitors so you can rival them on Google’s search page. Click here to order your free SEO audit.