​Search engine optimization (SEO) is the method(s) in which online companies use to increase traffic to its website. However, it shouldn’t be confused with marketing. Instead, you can think of SEO as a type of Internet marketing that should be included in any online company’s marketing strategy.

The importance of SEO

With competition as fierce as it is today, SEO is now more important than it ever was. Having an effective SEO strategy is vital for any business that has an online presence. When people use search engines, they’re more likely to choose results that appear within the first 5 suggestions on Google, Bing, or whichever search engine they choose to use. An effective SEO policy will make sure a business appears in that list (or close to it as possible). SEO is also very good for social promotion too. Those who find a company’s website via Google or Yahoo are more likely to share it via social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter—and who’s going to say no to a bit of free marketing?

Different types of SEO

So, now you know what SEO is and why it’s so important to a business, it’s time to take a look at some of the different methods that can be used. There are two main categories of SEO:

On-Page SEO

This type of SEO involves optimizing the actual website in order to increase the level traffic. It’s essentially about making the site as search-engine-friendly as possible but requires constant revision of the site in order to maintain its ranking. There are many different techniques within on-page SEO that can be used to help. Below are a few of the more important techniques:

  • Keyword optimization: Selecting the best keywords to use for your SEO marketing strategy is vital. However, it does require careful monitoring to ensure the most effective words are being used and to uncover new keyword opportunities too. Having an effective keyword optimization strategy in place will enable the company to drive more traffic to the website, measure potential traffic, and understand more about what their customers want.
  • ​Meta tag: It’s important to have a good, descriptive meta tag that focuses on the services the company provides while making it stand out from others.​​​​
  • Title optimization: Along with keyword optimization, this is probably the most important part of on-page SEO. The title tag should be short but descriptive enough to let visitors know what the company is all about. Because the title tag is indexed on search engines, it serves as a much more essential piece of the company’s SEO marketing strategy than anything else.
  • ​Alt text for images: Adding alt text to any images on the website is another way of making use of keyword optimization. Search engines will pick up the relevant keywords relating to the image and will help them understand better the page’s content.
  • ​Link optimization: Optimizing links on a website helps a search engine establish how pages relate to one another. Effective internal links are an essential part of securing a high-ranking in search engines.
  • Web content: It’s important that companies have useful, easy-to-find information on their website. They also need to ensure it’s regularly updated with appropriate keywords and phrases in order to maintain good search engine rankings.

For a handy On Page SEO Checklist have a look at…


on page SEO checklist

 

Off-Page SEO

This type of SEO involves promoting the website via other channels. It relies on other web pages to get traffic to its site. Off-page SEO uses a combination of techniques in which to improve the website’s position in the search engine results page (SERPs). Here are the most important ones:

  • ​Social media marketing: Social media is huge and so are the opportunities for marketing via it. Nearly everyone these days has some form of social media account, and effective social media marketing will increase traffic to the company’s website, hopefully increasing profits as a result. Having a strong presence on social media sites also makes the company appear more attractive and makes it easier for customers to find them. It’s also a way of achieving free publicity as users will often ‘like’ or ‘share’ something that they feel is worth exploring, potentially increasing your rankings even further.
  • ​Social bookmarking: This may not be quite as popular now as it was in the past, but it’s still a good way to attract traffic to a website nonetheless. Social bookmarking involves listing links on a network in order to generate more traffic to their own website. Then, anyone who has access to that network can search for links relating to the keyword they have. It’s a feature that’s comparable to personal bookmarking but on a collective scale.
  • ​Link building: Essentially this involves building external links to the company’s website and is probably the most popular and effective of all off page SEO techniques. Having quality links will not only increase the quality of your own website, but it will increase the amount of traffic coming to it as well. If you have solid information on your website that others are happy to mention, this is again like free marketing. If someone references your website on theirs it’s a way of telling search engines the page has good information.

Hopefully, you will now have a gained a deeper understanding as to what the difference between on-page and off-page SEO is and how it can help a business get more traffic to its website. The most effective SEO strategies are those that use a mixture of both on-page and off-page strategies. Promotion is a vital part of any business strategy and the more channels that are used in which to reach people, the higher the chance of success.

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