At Five by Five, we understand the importance of SEO. Actually, you could say we’re sort of obsessed with it! Great marketing messages, effective calls-to-action, and gorgeous websites are all great. But if no one ever actually finds them, they can’t do much for your business. That’s where SEO, or search engine optimisation, becomes your best friend!
What is SEO?
In the simplest terms, SEO is the process of making sure your website shows up in search engine results when people are looking for keywords or phrases related to your business. Let’s say you own a flower shop. If someone types “buy flowers online” into Google, you want your website to come up as one of the first results. That way, potential customers are more likely to find you and buy from you.
Why is SEO important?
There are two big reasons why SEO is so important.
First, according to a study by BrightEdge, organic search is the biggest driver of website traffic, beating out both social media and paid advertising. In other words, not optimising your website for SEO means you’re missing out on huge amounts of potential traffic.
Second, SEO helps you get more leads and customers for your business. That’s because people who find your website through search are already interested in what you have to offer. They’re already looking for a business like yours, looking for your products. They just need to find you first – and if you have a great website with helpful, informative content, they will.
Key elements of SEO
So what does SEO involve? Here are three of the most important elements.
Finding and adding the right keywords
One of the most important parts of SEO is finding the right keywords to target. These are the words and phrases people are actually typing into search engines when they’re looking for businesses like yours.
For example, if you sell hand-made jewellery, some of the keywords you might want to target are “handmade jewellery,” “unique jewellery,” and “one-of-a-kind jewellery.” You might even want to get more specific and target local audiences with keywords like “handmade jewellery on the Sunshine Coast” or “unique jewellery in Melbourne”. The best way to find keywords is through using tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs, which will give you related terms and the amount of times each term is searched per month.
Once you’ve found the right keywords, you need to add them to your website in the right places. That means using them in your page titles, headings, and throughout your content. But beware! Stuffing your keywords all over your website won’t actually help your SEO. In fact, it might actually hurt it. Google penalises websites that engage in keyword stuffing, so make sure to use your keywords thoughtfully.
Building backlinks
Another important part of SEO is building backlinks. A backlink is simply a link from one website to another. So if someone links to uses your website as a source and links to it from their blog, that’s a backlink. If a partner links to your website from their ‘Who We Work With’ page, that’s a backlink. You get the idea.
There are a few ways to get backlinks. One is to reach out to other website owners and ask if they’ll link to your site. Another is to create helpful, informative content that other people will want to link to. Yet another is to use social media or press releases to get people talking about your website.
But why are backlinks so important? Google looks at them as a sign of trustworthiness. If other websites are linking to yours, that must mean your website is pretty good! 3rd party tools often even develop ways of quantifying this ‘trustworthiness’, calling it domain authority.
Just make sure to get high-quality backlinks from reputable websites – many people try to cheat the system by acquiring thousands (sometimes even millions) of low-quality backlinks from disreputable sources. Whilst this may work for some time, Google always catches up, and you might be penalised for it in the long run.
Creating great content
Finally, one of the most important elements of SEO is creating great content. Why? Because at the end of the day, that’s what people are often looking for when using search engines. They want helpful, informative content that answers their questions and helps them solve their problems.
If you can provide that, you’re well on your way to ranking high in search engine results. So make sure your website is filled with high-quality, well-written content that’s relevant to your audience. Not only will actual human beings appreciate it, but Google’s algorithms are getting better and better at figuring out when websites actually give people helpful content — and they’ll reward you by bumping you up the search results.
Why SEO is important for your website
SEO is incredibly important for any business that wants to be successful online. If you’re not already investing time and energy into improving your website’s SEO, now is the time to start. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll start seeing results. Here are some of the most powerful benefits that highlight the importance of SEO.
Get discovered
The first and most obvious benefit of SEO is that it helps you get discovered by your target audience. No matter how great your product or service is, it won’t do you any good if no one can find you online.
By making sure your website is optimised for search engines, you’ll be able to rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs), and that means people are more likely to find your website.
Build credibility and trust
Another key benefit of SEO is that it can help you build credibility and trust with your audience. When people see you regularly in search results, they’ll be more likely to trust you as a voice in your industry. This is why content is so important. If you can share your expertise on a wide range of topics then you can slowly build yourself up to be the authority on those topics.
Stay ahead of the competition
Even if you’re not investing in SEO, your competitors are. And that means they’re going to be the ones who get found online — not you. By ranking higher than your competitors in search results, you’ll be able to steal away some of their market share and grow your business.
Become SEO-some with Five by Five
If you’re not sure where to start with your SEO strategy, don’t worry. Five by Five can help. We’re a full-service digital marketing agency that specialises in SEO that really works. We’ll work with you to create an optimised website that will help you get found online and grow your business. Contact us today to learn more!
