As a small business owner or manager, the chances are you have heard a lot about SEO and its vital role in digital marketing – but you may not yet know exactly what SEO is – or why it matters anyway!

Our quick primer will get you started.

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Defining SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and it basically describes a strategy of marketing activities that improve your business’s website rankings.

Why SEO matters

Many of today’s customers will find your business online – after all, we work, live and play in an increasingly digital world. But online customers are pressed for time and want easy answers. If they search for your kind of business, they are likely to only click on one of the first SERPs – or Search Engine Results Page and pick an obvious listing. If your website is hidden at the bottom of the SERP – or, even worse, on a secondary page – the chances are your customers won’t find it. So SEO is the work you need to carry out to ensure that customers can find your website with relevant search terms.

How SEO is carried out

SEO is designed to help search bots to find your website content and to index it correctly. It’s all about satisfying complex digital algorithms that search engines use to rank content and to help their customers by providing the best possible results for their search tern queries. So businesses will work out which search terms their customers are likely to use to find them (or a competitor) and then optimise their content to incorporate these terms in a way that suits human readers and search bots alike.

This can be done through activities such as Google ads, good content, well-structured websites, optimised page content and flow, social media integration, referral websites, online reviews, local listings, ‘authority content’, news content and blogs and other tactics.

The most important thing to know is that SEO is a form of good web practice and it’s absolutely essential to stay ahead of the game. Think you’ll maintain your ranking without it? You won’t, as your competitors will be investing in SEO and use it to move ahead of you!

Is SEO difficult?

It needn’t be – and it needn’t be expensive either. But it needs to be well-thought-out and planned, optimised for your keywords and objectives and delivered consistently and well, with ongoing evaluation and measurement to see what’s working and what needs tweaking. For most businesses, this will mean working with a digital agency that can deliver a targeted programme of work quickly – and evidence their results.

Contact Us

Find out more about how we can help you to get to grips with SEO and to retain – and win – new customers online as a result. Contact Digital Next for a no-obligation chat about your needs and to learn more!

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