SEO Basics: Give the People What They Want

Before we talk SEO, let’s talk about search engines. (There are a ton of them out there, but we’ll use Google since it’s the most used search engine.) Search engines are incredibly important and powerful: together, they account for over 70% of web traffic. People conduct trillions of searches every year, often with commercial intent to buy something or hire someone.

When someone uses Google to search for something, Google’s goal is to show results that are as relevant as possible to what the searcher is looking for. When Google shows results that are in line with what the searcher is looking for, that searcher’s trust builds, and they’re more likely to come back to use Google again in the future. Of course, Google wants people to keep using their service again and again. Their goal is for someone to search for something, click a link, and get the info they need without having to return to the search results.

When you optimize things like your business’ website copy, headings, images, Yelp listing, Google Business Profile, and more, you’re helping Google identify when it should or should not show your business in search results. When your SEO optimizations are appropriate and your website content is valuable and accurate, Google is more likely to show you in search results, which means more people see your business online…and more people means more sales! 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s all about getting your brand or business more visibility on search engines like Google without having to pay to show up in search results. When people visit your website from search engines, it’s called “organic traffic” in popular analytics tools like Google Analytics.

Despite the acronym, SEO is as much about people as it is about search engines. It’s about understanding what answers people are seeking, the words they’re using, and the type of content they want to consume, then designing your digital presence to appeal to them. The primary component of SEO is your website, but there are also things you can do outside of your website to improve your rankings in search results.

SEO makes a huge difference in driving traffic traffic to your website, and thus increasing sales, leads, brand awareness, etc over time. While this organic traffic doesn’t have immediate results like paid advertising, if you do it correctly and on an ongoing basis, it pays off for a long time. When you turn off your paid ads, you stop getting results, but with SEO, your results last over time.

To measure the success of your SEO work, consider where your website is “ranking” – that is, how high up in the results your website shows when someone searches a particular keyword. The higher you are in the search results, the more likely someone is to click your link. Let’s look at the data.

As you can see, almost a third of the people who perform a particular search will click on the first search result. This is twice as many as the people who will click on the second search result. The implications here are huge. If you can move from ranking second in the results for, let’s say, “organic farming supplies in Fort Collins” to ranking first, you will get twice as many visitors to your site. The results are also impressive if you’re not ranking second yet. If you’re ranking at #6, you can get twice as many results if you can improve your ranking to #4.

The key here is to optimize your online presence in a way that lets Google know you are one of the top sites to show users who search for that keyword. Keep in mind that it’s important to know what users want and then give that to them when they visit your website!

At Brillity Digital, we use SEO to help most clients build their web presence and ensure they’re easy to find by the right people at the right time. SEO is a reliable long-term strategy and often overlooked for the time it takes to build traffic. Don’t forget SEO when you’re managing your digital marketing strategy, as it always pays off. If you have any questions about SEO or want to talk about how we can manage SEO for your business, get in touch!