You probably have heard about SEO before and how some companies or brands spend a lot of money every year on this marketing technique but, do you know what SEO is? I’ll tell you all about it here, keep reading!
What is SEO and what does it mean?
These three letters stand for the term Search Engine Optimization. If your next question is: and what is a search engine? Well, the simplest and fastest answer to that is a very famous name: Google. This is the most popular search engine in the world, used by millions of people every day. In fact, some studies show that Google receives a daily average of 5.6 billion searches, not bad at all.
With these numbers, it is no wonder that thousands of companies and brands around the world compete every day and invest money in order to become one of the first results in Google every time someone searches for something related to their product or service.
Here is where SEO comes in because thanks to this technique we can rank higher and free of cost, placing our site on the first results page. If we can make that happen, we will guarantee more traffic and, ultimately, more sales, which is any business’ goal, right?.
How does SEO work?
The first thing we need to know before doing any SEO work is to understand what is it that Google (remember this is the main search engine, although there are others) values as a relevant feature to determine if a site should be on the first results page.
There is something Google loves above everything else: that a user stays on your site. This tells this search engine that your website is providing the exact answers or solutions to your visitor’s questions or needs and, therefore, you are offering a quality user experience. This is the key to any SEO strategy: the user experience.
And how do we offer this quality experience that makes our users stay? There are a number of actions and techniques that can be put in place. Here are some of them:
- Optimize on-page SEO. All websites have a series of tags that are invisible to the user but very helpful to Google, as they show a lot of information about the site. The title, the description, the headings or the image descriptions are some of these very important tags that must be always optimized in order to make sure Google understands what your page is about and determine if it is worth showing whenever someone looks for something similar.
- User-friendly web design. As mentioned above, Google wants your user to stay on your site as much as possible so it is very important that we retain that visitor through an intuitive and comfortable design. It wouldn’t make sense to offer the best content and the best answers to our user’s queries if our site has a poor and hard to read layout. Make it easy for your user, that is the key.
- Content aimed at your audience. It may sound obvious, but we must offer the content our audience is looking for and that is something that doesn’t happen all the time. Giving the right answer to a question or need can be a difficult challenge. That is why in SEO we use keywords. These are words or phrases any user enters in the Google search bar every time they want to look for something. An example of this could be “best restaurants near me” or “men’s elegant shoes”. Knowing what keywords our users can find us for will allow us to create content around that and rank better for those searches.
There are a lot of other additional techniques that help build a better SEO strategy, such as mobile device optimization, internal and external links to the site or page speed. In this larger guide, you will find more details about how these other techniques work for a better ranking strategy in Google.
How long does it take for SEO to show results?
This is one of the most frequently asked questions among clients who start working with SEO strategies.
You have to think of it as something you are investing your time and your money in, which means, results won’t happen overnight (sorry to break it to you…) But, don’t be discouraged because once all the SEO seeds are correctly planted across your online channels, results will happen, and that is guaranteed.
But if what you really want to know is a specific timeframe, it typically takes for a site to rank for a specific term from 3 months to 1 year (there are a lot of factors at play).
It may sound like a long time because you probably want to see results right away. But here’s the thing: you have to trust the process because once you get to the point you aimed for, the results will come your way organically, without investing tons of money (like you would if you choose paid advertisement). That’s the magic of SEO!
When you are able to rank for specific terms within your industry, the traffic you will attract will surpass your expectations. You will witness how your business grows in a natural and sustainable way.
What is SEO? Now you know
Now that you know what SEO is, it is important to understand that, if we want our site to be well optimized and ready to be shown on Google’s first results page, we have to use these techniques mainly because our competitors are probably a lot and there are tons of content online nowadays. That is why we have to differentiate ourselves from the rest and be the answer our audience is looking for.
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