What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

A lot of people can feel overwhelmed by the amount of jargon involved in technology fields. The acronym ‘SEO’ means nothing to most people but it is actually one of the most important aspects of building the online presence of your small business.

SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It refers to the ability of your website content to be shown in a good position on a search engine results page. If done correctly, it can bring a lot of traffic to your website and clients to your business.

There are many important aspects to SEO that aren’t obvious when you’re starting out. I will outline some of the basic principles in this blog.

• Why is SEO Important for Small Businesses?
  SEO will improve the visibility of your website in search engines, bringing more eyes to your website and brand. When your website appears in a high position on a results page, especially Google, it gives your business a sense of legitimacy as customers tend to trust that Google can judge whether a website is of good quality and the business is trustworthy.
  
  If you are hoping to increase the traffic to your website then SEO will need to be a major focus for you. While it is true that advertisements can bring traffic to your website these can be very expensive if the words you wish to advertise with are competitive. It is also true that many people will scroll past ads and look for ‘organic’ results as they will trust their quality more than someone who paid for a higher position.

• What Are ‘Organic’ Search Engine Results?
  Organic results are the websites that appear on a search engine results page without anyone paying the search engine to put them there. Most of the time the top result on a Google results page will be an advertisement but sometimes there will be several of them appearing at the top for lucrative search terms.
  
  However, searchers are becoming more savvy and will often scroll past these ads to find the top organic results. This is where the value of investing in your SEO comes into play. While SEO may seem like a lot of work to begin with, if you stick with it you can see incredible long-term results.

• How Can I Improve My Local SEO?
  The best thing you can do to improve your local SEO is to focus on high quality and helpful content. This type of content will contain useful words that search engines will read and know which results pages to show your website on. The quality of your content will keep visitors there longer, which will signal to search engines that your website is better than the rest.