As a business owner, you’ve probably heard of the term SEO being thrown around a lot in the digital marketing space. What does it mean and why do you need it? Today, we’ll break it down for you and dive into some of the basics. It can seem complicated and there’s all these crazy terms, like SERP and keyword planning, and deep sea fishing. Just kidding. Wanted to see if you’re still paying attention.
For starters, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s the process of driving traffic to your website organically from search engines, such as Google.
Let’s put it into a real-world example
Imagine this scenario: You decide to take up back-packing and want to shop for new hiking gear. But, there’s only one problem. You’ve never back-packed before and you need to learn the basics of where to start, what gear to buy, and how to protect yourself from being chased and eaten alive by a wild bear or mountain goat. I mean, it could happen.
The first thing you would probably do is go to Google and type in something like “how to backpack for beginners.” At this point you’re not even ready to buy gear. You’re simply looking for tips on how to get started. HELP, ME PLEASE.
Next, you’ll probably scan headlines and click on the most helpful article that pops up. One recent study shows that most users click on the first three results in Google, with 28.5% of the traffic going to the first result.
Keep in mind that there are ten search results shown on each page. Once you get down to the last result, it drops to an average 2.5% click-rate.
28.5% of people click on Google’s first search result.
15.7% of people click on Google’s second search result.
11% of people click on Google’s third search result.
If you don’t find what you’re looking for, you will probably repeat the Google search a few times using different keywords until you find the resource you want.
Aha! You found it! The perfect article that tells you how to get started as a beginner backpacker. You click on the website to read the article and it takes you to a company that also sells hiking and camping gear. Genius.
See what they did there?
Companies who sell a product and service can attract their ideal customers to their website through creating awareness style content. This is a type of content that helps inform and educate your audience about a topic of interest, without selling anything at all. You’re simply bringing “awareness” to an issue, question, or subject at hand.
SEO Drives Traffic to Your Website Through Valuable Content
Here’s the thought process behind this concept: If you provide valuable information to your customers, then they have a chance to become familiar with your company and begin to know and trust your brand. In return, they are more likely to purchase from you in the future.
Traditional sales techniques teach us that it takes about eight touches to make a sale. That means you want to get in front of your customers with good content marketing as soon as possible. Google is one of the best ways to do that.
If you are a business owner, it literally pays to have the top spots in Google to drive traffic to your website.
In a nutshell, that’s a real-world example of how SEO works to drive traffic to your website. With the competitive digital landscape, it’s extremely important to have a solid SEO strategy and a Content Marketing plan when it comes to growing your business online. Your customers are out there waiting. You just need to draw them in (ideally, before dark when the bears come out).
For more SEO tips, check out our latest blog post on Search Marketing.