Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the search engine ranking and increasing the number of visitors on a website. Unlike paid advertisements, SEO improves the position of a website for free. By learning practical SEO, you can optimise your website on your own.
In this article, we share the steps that you should take before you set up an SEO strategy for your business. After reading this article, you will know:
- Is SEO the right strategy for my business?
- What can I get from SEO?
- How do I know if my SEO strategy is successful?
- Can you get started with SEO by yourself?
How do you get your customers?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of SEO, let’s first look at the model you are working with. This will help in getting an answer to some of these questions:
- Should you focus on SEO?
- What results can you get from SEO?
- Is doing SEO worth the investment?
Who are your customers?
Let’s begin with getting a better look at how you get your customers. For this, you should go into as much detail as possible. Answer the following questions:
- What is your customer persona?
- Are you targeting a specific geographical location?
- Are you targeting a specific age group?
- Do your customers come from a particular background?
- What is the income group of your customers?
- Are you targeting a specific gender?
Ideally, you should have a very clear understanding of who your customers are. For example, let’s say you run an Italian restaurant. Simply saying that your customers are people who like Italian food is not enough. You should be able to tell which geographical areas do they come from, what is their age group, etc.
How do you get your customers?
At this stage, you should have a clear understanding of who your customers are. Now let’s look at how you get these customers.
There are two primary ways of marketing in order to get new customers: organic and inorganic marketing.
- Organic marketing: Organic marketing refers to free marketing strategies, such as word of mouth advertising or online content marketing.
- Inorganic marketing: Inorganic marketing refers to paid marketing, in the form of ads.
Before moving forward, look at your business and see how much do you spend on marketing. If you are getting a steady stream of new customers, then you can likely grow your business with a low marketing budget.
Having an understanding of your marketing expenses will help in determining the suitability of an SEO strategy for you. If you have a high marketing budget, then you should invest in practical SEO in order to increase traffic and visibility.
What does online presence mean for you?
If you are interested in learning about practical SEO, it is quite likely that your business has an online component. However, every online platform is not the same. Here are some of the common ways in which businesses create an online presence:
- Website
- Social media such as Facebook or Instagram
- Portfolio sharing platforms such as Behance
You can use any means to create an online presence for your business. There is no one size fits all strategy here. For example, you might sell to young mothers who frequently use Facebook. In this case, creating a presence on Facebook will likely have the most meaningful impact on you.
What do you want to achieve from website Practical SEO?
While SEO can bring in great results, it is important to remember that it isn’t the right strategy for every business. As the name suggests, you are optimising for search engines. If your business is primarily relying on Facebook to get customers, then SEO is unlikely to have a huge impact on sales.
On the other hand, if you run a business that could benefit from an online search, such as a restaurant, then SEO is the right strategy for you.
In order to decide whether you should conduct practical SEO or not, you should have a clear idea of what you want to get out of an SEO strategy. Let’s say you want to get new customers. In this case, your business should be such that it can grow from an optimised website.
Defining this goal will also help you in deciding what to do when your visibility increases. For example, if your goal is to get customers, then once users land on your website, you want to provide a strong call to action for them to buy from you.
What can Practical SEO do for you?
Conducting SEO can have many significant advantages for your business. Depending on the goals of your business, you can decide which ones are worth aiming for.
Let’s look at some of the benefits that you can expect from doing website SEO:
- Increased visibility and traffic: One of the primary goals of any practical SEO strategy is to improve the website ranking in the search engine results. This will directly translate into increased traffic for your business.
- More customer trust: In today’s internet era, your online presence goes a long way in building customer trust. This applies to every business. For example, customers will likely look at online reviews before choosing a restaurant. You can earn customer trust by creating a positive online presence.
- Better user experience: SEO is more than just uploading content on your website. Through SEO, you will provide value to your users. This can be in the form of better content or easy to navigate site structure. In the end, such efforts lead to a better user experience.
- Increased revenue: Increasing traffic and customer trust are some of the best ways to get customers. While you might have a great product, it will not generate revenue unless customers actually know about it. SEO helps in bridging this gap.
- Reduced marketing budget: There are two ways of ranking high on Google: SEO or Google Ads. Through SEO, you can improve your ranking organically such that you don’t need to spend a lot of advertising.
How does Google rank websites?
In order to reap the benefits of SEO, you need to better understand what Google wants. Google looks at some factors while creating the search engine results page. Your SEO strategy is doomed unless you understand this side of the coin.
Keep in mind that the end goal for Google is to serve its users. These are some of the factors that Google looks at while determining which website is the best way to serve them:
- Value to readers: As the primary goal is to serve the users, Google naturally prefers content that provides value to its users. Your practical SEO strategy should mainly focus on adding value such that Google is incentivised in improving your ranking.
- Quality of backlinks: Backlinks refer to another website providing a link to your website. Backlinks essentially work as third party votes and attest to the content on your website. Keep in mind that not all backlinks are created equal – a backlink from Forbes will have more value than a small WordPress blog. In order to rank high, you should get as many quality backlinks as possible.
How do you measure the success of Practical SEO strategy?
Google uses three factors to measure the performance of your SEO strategy.
- Impressions: the number of times your site has been seen in search results.
- Clicks: the number of times a user has clicked on your site in search results.
- Average position: the average position of your website in the search results.
These three factors provide an overall look at how effective your SEO strategy has been. Once you start optimising your website, you should see an improvement in all the factors.
For example, simply improving the impressions or average position has little value for you. You want the click-through-rate to improve as well.
You can use Google Analytics for this purpose.
How to get started with Practical SEO?
Conducting SEO is a full-time job and you can’t focus on everything at once. Here’s a glance at the main sub-categories of SEO:
On-page SEO
On-page SEO refers to the optimisation done on a particular page. This includes improving the title, adding keywords or setting a meta description. On-page SEO is the easiest to get started with and requires the least amount of technical skills.
Here are some resources to get started with on-page SEO:
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to all such activities that are done outside the website in order to increase traffic. This includes social media marketing, link building, content outreach, etc.
Here are some resources to get started with off-page SEO:
Local SEO
Local SEO refers to optimising the website for increased visibility in local search results. This is extremely important for businesses with a physical presence, such as a restaurant. However, businesses that are purely online in nature will not benefit from local SEO.
Here are some resources to get started with local SEO:
Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to making technical changes to your website in order to help with indexing and crawling by Google. This includes optimising site speed, improving the website structure, etc.
Here are some resources to get started with technical SEO:
You should select where to start depending on your business. For example, if your site speed is slow, then focusing on technical SEO is quite important. On the other hand, if you feel the content on your website does not add value, then you should start with on-page SEO.
Keep in mind that SEO does not bring results overnight. You will have to put in consistent efforts for months before you start seeing positive results.
For your ease, we have created an SEO template. This will help in deciding if setting up an SEO strategy is right for your business. You can use our template here.
Ramp up your SEO strategy with Practics
At Practics.in, we pride ourselves on being great at what we do, i.e. SEO and Content Mktg. We understand search engines and content well enough to help businesses get the most out of their online presence. We can help you rank high on relevant searches by your potential customers.
Try us. If you are not satisfied with our services, we give a 100% refund for our first month of work together. No questions asked.
Our focus is on helping businesses improve their search ranking to increase visibility, grow traffic, and maximise revenue. Schedule a FREE consulting with us today to learn how SEO can help in growing your business.
Check out our incredible success stories.
WhatsApp us at +91 99670 85327 or email at contact@practics.in to know how you can transform your marketing.
