Image Credits Pixabay
Over the past decade, the internet has grown from a medium of communication to an indispensable part of our daily routine. Millions of people are using the internet every minute of the day to find out vital information, conduct daily tasks from a remote location and communicate. Entire businesses have grown around the internet, so much so that there is not much one can do if he doesn’t have a net connection. We carry the internet with us wherever we go on our phones and tablets.
In such a scenario, digital marketing (marketing via online medium) has become the biggest preference of businesses of all kinds. Not only is it necessary from the viewpoint of the importance of the internet, but is also cost effective and makes it easier for one to direct their marketing techniques to their specific target audience via means of search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, cookies etc. Many methods of digital marketing have been devised, such as search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media optimization, content marketing, email marketing etc. We all have seen them and have been influenced by them at some point or the other.
Narrowing down to specific methods, we can observe that SEO (search engine optimization) is the most crucial of all these methods. It is cost effective, builds credibility and recognition for a brand and takes customers directly to each businesses greatest and most efficient sales tool, the website.
SEO can be defined as “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results.” This implies that when a person enters a particular query into a search engine, the businesses that can help solve that query, and have a good SEO strategy will appear in one of the top results. This is an unpaid medium, and the web page will not appear marked as an advertisement at the top of the page but will be featured by the search engine itself. SEO experts such as Milwaukee SEO Company are able to use certain methods such as content and key words to manipulate the search results in such a way that the website appears at the top of the results.
From the perspective of the customer, SEO becomes an effective tool because of the faith that people have in popular search engines as well as the heavy usage of the same. Nowadays, whenever one has a query, big or small, or needs a good or service, one simply “Googles it”. Google is one of the most easily available tools on our devices and holds a lot of credibility in the minds of users, mainly due to their optimized processes and reputation for honesty. Also, internet users are typically used to having everything provided to them within minutes and do not have the time or patience to check beyond the first page of millions of website results that pop up with every internet search. This means that SEO gives your website visibility and recall value amongst customers as well as builds credibility by simply being present in the top results.
SEO can be done by various methods, depending on the nature of the business. Keywords are the most prominent amongst these, where the SEO agency involves strategic keywords into the web content at the appropriate places. Google features web results based on the relevance of the content, so including these keywords can help majorly boost your search rankings. Often, these keywords are involved in the title or the coding of the hyperlink itself. These are known as METAtags and can help increase search rankings by keyword intensity.
Businesses also rely largely on web and blog content to boost their search rankings. Constantly upgrading your websites and blogs can be useful as Google is constantly searching for new and upgraded websites. Also, inbound links are a common method. This involves web content placed by your website on another website that already has high SEO rankings, along with links to your website. This not only directs traffic to your website but also increases credibility considerably, since it is basically like one website endorsing another.
SEO lies at the foundation of all digital marketing. Essential visibility of your website is taken care of, along with the added benefit of credibility. Every good digital marketing strategy includes a SEO plan that is treated as a crucial indication of the success of the website and consequently the business itself.