What is the importance of SEO in Digital Marketing?

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What is SEO and why do business use SEO as part of their digital marketing strategy?
A great way to answer that question is by asking, how many times have you gone past the first page result in a search engine search? or even scrolled to the bottom of the page?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, in simple terms it means using specific tactics in order to rank your page higher on search engine results. These tactics include using Keywords that relate to your industry, using authoritative backlinks to strengthen and promote your knowledge of your industry and posting fresh content that relates to your business. These content can be in various formats such as video, infographics, blogs and websites as a whole.

How the SEO ranking system works.


SEO ranking system is based primarily on the crawling, indexing and ranking of content from a website. 

In the case of Google, it sends out crawling bots that scan every piece of content from your site if robot.txt is enabled. 

SEO analysis of TheHealthStore using Google Lighthouse feature

Indexing comes from the sorting of information gathered and this is where your tags come in.
Tags are important for SEO as they clearly label what is where on a website. Imagine if you see a heading for the main page placed above content for the contact page. A well thought out website will improve the efficiency and speed of indexing.


Lastly your content is ranked, this is based on the search engines algorithms and it involves a complex system of various factors including of relevance to keywords and user feedback. It is important that your content relates to your industry as this will increase your authority on the subject depending on the quality of your content. You're trying to show search engines you know your stuff!

What tools can I use to monitor my SEO?

SEO is also affected other factors such as page speed, accessibility, keyword relevance and active links. But how do we monitor all these?
Various digital marketing tools were created to help in the monitoring of SEO.
Let's analyse these factors for using The HealthStore website.

Measuring website speed for SEO

 - Using PageSpeed Insights  we can see common issues with the loading of plugins, images and script on the page. Since the user expects fast webpages businesses should optimise their speed in order to meet consumer expectations, it's no wonder speed is a vital factor in SEO ranking.
Page speed for TheHealthStore

Checking accessibility for SEO

- Making sure your content and website is accessible is your most relevant channels and platforms is another important factor is SEO rating. These include aspect ratio, image quality and content adjustment. In simple terms it means that you have considered that your content will be displayed equally across all browsers, devices and channels so you can offer the same level of quality to users regardless of their device.  
Google Lighthouse Tool used for TheHealthStore

Keyword importance in SEO

 - Keywords define the theme of your content and enables search engines to index your content. Keyword research is important as it will help you create content that searchers are looking for. 

Organic search result for TheHealthStore

There are different ways to find specific keywords. Businesses that have a GoogleAds account are able to search for keywords and based their content on low either low or high keyword volume. Usually the lower the volume the more specific and niche the content and higher will involve more competition. For those who don't have a GoogleAds account, if you compare the search results you a specific topic Google will normally give you "suggested" or "People also ask" searches and then you can go from there. 

The importance of Links on SEO

 - Links relate to any pages on your website. Having active links is important for SEO as it shows that the site is active and running smoothly. As new pages are added, changed or removed all links to said pages must be changed or removed. You've probably seen 404 not found pages before. Think of how frustrating that is! Google and most search engines feel the same way so the number of 404s will impact the SEO of your website. Now for small business with only a few pages, this isn't an issue as they can fix it promptly but imagine a website like an e-commerce website, with a listing of products. Poor web designing team. But as always there are tools out there to help. A favourite of mine is Drlinkcheck as it offers a free version. Simply put your URL in and it'll scan all pages and point out 404s for you, saving you precious time. Moz is another widely used that includes all major SEO tools.

DrLinkCheck results


Moz





Some example of keywords for The health Store by Moz









Balancing SEO and SEM

SEM means Search Engine Marketing and it is closely related to SEO in most aspects bar organic search. 

What is organic search

- It means that no amount of money has gone into promoting your content in a search engine and the results are based on your SEO efforts alone. In simple terms the results are not ads.

Why not just use SEO for your business

 - SEO and SEM go hand in hand depending on your marketing goals, especially for e-commerce businesses. By using both of them you are able to boost your positioning on SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and though costly depending on the keywords you bid on it creates awareness for your brand. Usually new business use it to create awareness and then use a combination of SEO and SEM in future marketing tactics. 

SEO and SEM results 

Competitiveness between brands ensures the need for SEM and they are constantly trying to outrank the other but SEO will continue being the long term solution for ranking high on search results. 

SEO is vital for organic search engine ranking and an important tool in digital marketing and although it is a long continuous process it offers free awareness to businesses costing only time.








Location: Ireland

Comments

  1. Osnei7 February 2022 at 07:56

    Hi roger,

    Very interesting your post. The examples you gave about the Health Store website are very clear and help us to understand the importance of having a webpage that runs smoothly in all types of devices. I think the keywords can be a big challenge for companies that don't have a specific and relevant content on their websites. As the more similar is your content from other contents available online the more difficult is for SEO to index and rank your website. Also the tools to check on broken links are very useful and definitely can help businesses to keep their pages up to date.

    Thank you for sharing. ;)

    Osnei Pereira

    ReplyDelete
  2. Natália15 February 2022 at 14:06

    Hi Roger,

    Thank you very much for sharing the importance of Search Engine Optimisation in Digital Marketing. That’s the first time that I read a post which explains this concept very well.
    I though really interesting the topic regarding “top ranking keywords” and also which tools can be used to monitor the SEO, I haven’t had any idea about it.
    In regards to links on SEO, I really liked the possibility of checking broken links. My website just has a few pages and it costs me a lot of time to fix them, I cannot imagine a supermarket website with hundreds pages.

    Thank you for sharing

    Natália

    ReplyDelete
  3. Paola6 March 2022 at 08:33

    Hi Roger,

    thank you for sharing this very informative post on SEO.
    SEO can be daunting for marketers and for new businesses as it is sometimes perceived as a difficult concept to grasp.
    I completely agree on the importance of making sure that your website and contents are easily accessible on different browsers and different devices. I believe this is also important in order to make your customer happy with your website and to facilitate an easy navigation of the content.
    Keywords are also such an important factor when considering your SEO strategy. I didn't know businesses could use GoogleAds to find relevant keywords to their products, thank you very much for pointing that out!

    Paola

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rafael Prado de Farias12 March 2022 at 08:55

    Hi Roger,

    thank you for sharing this very interesting post.

    I’m a spa owner and I have been looking for effective marketing practices to boost my business goals. I love the part when you mentioned about Competitiveness between brands ensures the need for SEM and they are constantly trying to outrank the other, but SEO will continue being the long-term solution for ranking high on search results. It was well explained. I also loved the several tools that you used as an example. I’m going to try all of them on my business. Definitely I will try to apply this concept on my business. It is quite challenging find marketing content tailored for small business. Great insights! I appreciate your post, and I’m looking forward to the next topic

    ReplyDelete

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