Millions of people use search engines (like Google) every day to find what they need, from phone numbers, to products and where to find them.
If your business or blog can solve their problems or can provide answers to their questions, how do you ensure that the public can find you?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the answer.
The term alone makes the average person cringe. “Gosh that sounds complicated,” you think, backing away with arms raised.
Not true, SEO is really simple and is the key to making your online marketing effective.
What is SEO?
SEO is all about making your search engine result relevant to the user’s search query so more people find your business online. As a first step though, for the uninitiated, you have to have placed your business online by creating a website or a Facebook page or a Instagram account (or similar), or having these created for you.
Let’s say you own a shoes store. Then, if Joe Soap is searching for shoe stores in Ballito on Google, a number of websites could pop up. There might even be a few pages of results.
Those websites that appear first will be optimised for the search term “shoes”, and the specific location “Ballito”.
The words “Shoe” and “Ballito” are known as keywords.
Keywords are words that search engines look for and highlight as important when a user is searching for a specific product or service.
In this example, the search will find shoe stores in Ballito first, then spread to Durban or beyond in later pages.
How do businesses benefit from using a different platform to promote SEO content?
As there are several websites for shoe stores in Ballito, can you do anything to make yours rank higher than those of your competitors?
You could pay the search engine to put your website at the top of the page, but an organic (free) listing is equally possible.
Marketing specialists create SEO campaigns by joining forces with high traffic websites.
In reality most businesses’ websites aren’t generating thousands of pageviews a month unless their website is directly and widely relevant to the community or area.
Websites that generate high volumes of traffic are usually news, sports or lifestyle (travel/gossip/celebrity) focused.
These sites all have relevant information that impact our daily lives, attract many queries and therefore generate high volumes of traffic.
Now you want your store ranked highest countrywide or even globally. How can you achieve that?
By using a second channel to expose SEO optimised content, your website will gain organic points and helps your website to rank higher on Google organically (without the use of paid-for tools).
The earlier, or higher, ranked on the search results page and the more frequently a website appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive.
These visitors can then be converted into customers.
For example, if you had to advertise your business on The North Coast Courier website (which receives 300 000 pageviews a month on average), with an article about the latest shoe fashions, for example, search engines would see you as more relevant and automatically rank you higher in the listings.
By SEO optimising your content you are making your website more accessible for users who are looking for your products, therefore increasing your chance of converting clicks into sales.
To find out more about Search Engine Optimisation or to have your business featured on The North Coast Courier website, contact our Digital Sales Consultant, Tana Davies, on 032 946 0276 or email [email protected]
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