Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective marketing strategies today. Every company that owns a website and wants to improve their online visibility, brand awareness, exposure, credibility and authority, among other important things, should leverage SEO.

The main reason is that the online market has become highly competitive and crowded with various businesses and offers.

SEO can help your company truly stand out in such an environment. Therefore, it’s safe to say that SEO has become more mandatory than optional these days. With that in mind, here are a few things you should know about SEO and its importance.

SEO is a marketing strategy that helps you optimize your web pages and content for search engines. The purpose of this marketing strategy is to help your website rank well on SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages).

So, what does that really mean? The simple answer is that SEO helps you get to the first page of search results on search engines, such as Google, for example. That may not seem as much but when you consider the fact that 75% of online consumers never look past the first page of search results then it’s a pretty big deal to appear on that first page.

Appearing on the first page of search result for related keywords doesn’t just provide you with much-needed organic traffic. As a matter of fact, SEO can bring numerous other benefits to your company. Here are a few of those benefits.

• Improved visibility in the online world.
• Your website becomes easily findable and accessible.
• You gain more qualified leads.
• It boosts your brand awareness.
• High rankings give you great domain authority.
• You position yourself as an industry expert.
• Consumers perceive you as a credible and trustworthy source.

These are just some of the benefits SEO can provide you with but there are many more. More importantly, SEO is very cost-effective. In other words, regardless of how much you invest in this marketing strategy, you’ll always be able to drive viable results.

The majority of SEO tactics revolve around improving your website’s functionality and performance, as well as optimizing the content on your web pages for both users and search engines. You basically rank for a few selected keywords that will best match your content with user intent.

Search engines, such as Google, examine a wide variety of ranking signals on your website. They crawl and index your pages to determine their rankings. There are three main SEO tactics that help you improve rankings.

• Technical SEO – Focuses on improving website performance and functionality.
• On-page SEO – Focuses on optimizing content.
• Off-page SEO – Builds exposure and credibility through content marketing, guest posting and link building.

Nowadays, many businesses compete against better-funded and well-established companies in the market. Without SEO, they would have little chance of reaching success. That’s why it’s of vital importance to leverage the full potential of SEO. These are just some of the benefits SEO can provide you with but there are many more. More importantly, SEO is very cost-effective. In other words, regardless of how much you invest in this marketing strategy, you’ll always be able to drive viable results.