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What Is SEO and Why Is It Important for Digital Marketing?

SEO makes sure the website’s content is relevant to the search engine’s algorithms. And the more relevant it is, the higher are your chances to appear at the top of the search results. And that, obviously, has a huge effect on the popularity of the project.

The concept of SEO is simple, yet it’s pretty hard to utilize all the aspects of it the right way. It requires a lot of knowledge and experience to understand how all the elements work and how to use them wisely. Especially considering how often the algorithms and the trends change.

That’s why most experts in the digital marketing industry recommend hiring search engine placement services to get the most out of search engine optimization. Such professional SEO services know the current market circumstances and have the highest level of expertise in the sphere. Their skills and knowledge ensure that your project won’t just disappear in the depths of the internet.

Key Elements

To understand the impact of SEO better, let’s have a look at the key elements.

Quality Content

Content is something most businesses try to put a lot of effort into, even if they have no clue about search engines. Providing users with informative and interesting content has always been an easy way to attract visitors and raise their reputation. In most cases, it’s represented by such things:

  • Blog posts
  • Page content
  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Articles
  • And so on

Yet, the quality of the content has a lot of influence on the search engine position too. How does the algorithm even analyze it? Well, the usage of AI isn’t that surprising nowadays, and the search engines found out how to make use of it almost a decade ago. To form the results page, all the contents of the websites are checked. Of course, it can’t read and understand the text as humans do, but there are particular algorithms that analyze the quality of the content based on certain criteria.

Keywords

Keywords are one of the oldest and most fundamental aspects of SEO. They are single words or word combinations that are kind of neon sights for search engines. They have a lot of influence on how relevant the search engine finds the website. Also, in most cases, they help to determine the niche of the website, so that it will be shown to people in a particular sphere more.

The most important thing in keywords is the balance in their quantity and their organic presence in the text. Using too little won’t impact the popularity much, and too many will have a poor result either. Also, they should be an organic part of the text, so that they don’t stand out.

The other thing you should keep in mind is their quality. Yes, keywords can be characterized by quality too. To analyze which are the most effective ones today, keywords research must be done.

It will reveal which ones bring the most traffic in your niche, and which are too common and won’t do anything. Sometimes, it’s recommended to use more specific ones. For example, instead of  “Car dealership”, use “Buy a car in Sacramento”. The latter is also a location-based keyword, which is extremely effective.

Technical SEO

When the search engine analyzes a web page, it takes into consideration not only what it can “see”, but also the technical aspects. They can be discovered quite easily. These are, for example:

  • Server location
  • Response delay
  • Page optimization
  • Performance of elements

To provide users with the best search results, algorithms pay attention to these things too. That’s because the technical aspects directly impact the user experience quality. You would prefer a page that loads quickly and doesn’t lag when you’re scrolling down over the clunky and laggy one, right?

Backlinks

Backlinking is another old-school element of SEO, which is still effective today. It works in a simple way – you put the links to your project on other resources and pages. Of course, you do it organically and with the consent of the page’s owners.

Sometimes, they can be inserted as a link to your project in a review article, or maybe just a useful reference for those in the sphere. There are many different techniques for backlinking, but the key point is to persuade users that it’s in their interest to visit your site.

The Importance

Now that we know everything about what is SEO, it’s time to learn how it impacts your marketing strategy and why it’s important.

Rankings and Visibility

As said in the beginning, SEO has a direct impact on the search result page rankings. Most of the time, when we’re looking for something, we will click on the first few links the search engine provides us. And that’s why all the websites on the internet do their best to get into the top rankings there.

The higher you’re on the result page, the more visible you are to the users. That, in its order, increases the traffic and helps you get a lot more revenue.

Reputation and Credibility

How can SEO even have an impact on such things as reputation? Well, as we learned from the description of its elements, most of them rely on the quality: the quality of the content, the quality of the keywords, the quality of the technical optimization. And by improving all these aspects, you also improve the user experience.

If the visitors of the page find the content on it more interesting and informative than on other resources, they will visit it more often. Also, they are more likely to share it with their friends and make posts on social media. It helps to build reputation and trust a lot as a side effect, both of which are crucial for any project.

Cost-Effectiveness

SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing. Though, many companies forget about it for some reason and end up wasting tons of resources on other marketing aspects. But as we learned before, SEO relies on some very basic elements and techniques. Right, they require a lot of experience to do right, but their concepts are pretty simple.

Focusing on SEO in a digital marketing campaign helps to make the project popular in a natural way. Keywords and backlinks attract organic traffic, and technical optimization improves user experience. Not even to mention how much users top search rankings bring.

That doesn’t mean it’s more important than other marketing techniques, though. One must understand that only by combining different aspects and methods can one bring a project to the top. For example, combine paid advertisements like Google Ads with infographics and keywords. Keywords will make them more relevant to search algorithms, and infographics will make users interested much more than the usual ads.

Final Words

Search engine optimization is the core of digital marketing, and will always remain such. Just remember to create a well-thought out plan before you even start the campaign, and analyze everything beforehand. Also, keep in mind that hiring professionals is more rational and cost-effective than doing everything yourself in most cases. This goes especially for technical optimization and keyword research. So, remember the importance of SEO, but don’t neglect other aspects of digital marketing. Good luck!