Digital marketing is the process of promoting a business, brand, products, and services with the goal of increasing leads and sales. An integral part of digital marketing is search engine optimization whose purpose is to increse the PageRank of each page on a website.
According to statistics compiled by hypervisibility.com, 67,000 searches are performed on Google every second of every day with 95% of all searchers clicking on one of the links in the first search engine results page (SERP). The click-through-rate from being listed in first position is 30% and by the 9th position, the click through rate is 2%. Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the volume of relavent visitors to a company’s website from organic (unpaid) searches results. A person engaged in SEO, referred to as a SEO, has the goal to have a business’ website listed as high as possible on the first page of search results and when clicked, the visitor will eventually complete a contact form or make a purchase online.
SEO is not a one and done task. A SEO will work with a company’s marketing team to achieve their goals throughout the year. For example, in the first quarter the company wants to promote a new product that will be released in the second quarter. The second quarter will be focused on promoting trade shows a company will attend with the new product, and etcetera. A SEO must continually, audit a website and recommend changes to meet a company’s marketing goals.
An SEO audit will reveal technical, structural, on-page, and user experience issues while identifying gaps in content and recommend marketing opportunities based on competitive analysis. A audit can take two and six weeks to complete but the SEO should be meeting with the marketing team on a regular basis to identify low-hang fruit items that can be addressed and give progress on the audit. SEO activities and recommendations are either onsite or offsite-related.
Onsite SEO
Everything a SEO does on a company’s website to make it easier for search engines to find a business is onsite SEO. It includes ensuring each page
- has a title and description for search engines to read
- loads quickly on mobile, tablet, and desktop
- works correctly and looks appealing on mobile, tablet, and desktop
- links to other pages on the website to keep visitors engaged
- can be found by search engines
- is updated regularly as search engines like fresh content
- is not a duplicate or very similar to other pages on the site
- does not have broken links
- is tracked with the ability to analyze visitor’s activity on the page
Offsite SEO
Offsite SEO includes everything done external to a website, besides advertising, which is considered to be a different part of internet marketing. The following offsite activities are found by the same search engines.
- external linking of other websites back to a company’s website
- press releases
- articles
- social media accounts with
- posts linking back to a company’s website
- landing pages linking back to a company’s website
Either onsite or offsite SEO will help a company but a combination of both improves a company’s overall appearance in search results.
Contact OpenLava to discuss your business goals.
