What Is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is one of the most difficult Internet Marketing concepts to explain.
Why should you place so much emphasis on SEO?
No matter how attractive, professional and informative your website design and content, it’s invisible to your customers if it cannot be found via search engines like Google.
SEO is what enables your website, and hence your business, to be found online.
Bizeeo Marketing Agency provides SEO Services that support your overall marketing plan.
SEO Basics
A basic understanding of SEO can be realized by seeing things through the eyes of your customers.
Customers have varying degrees of familiarity with brands, products and services. Their online search behaviors generally fall into one of the following categories:
- Potential – A customer who has never done business with you and may not be aware of your existence, but IS searching for products or services that you offer.
- Former – A customer that has previously done business with you and remembers a few details about your business.
- Repeat – A customer that conducts business with you on a regular basis, and has hopefully developed some loyalty to your brand.
SEO Marketing
As a business owner, you should compete for all three types of searchers.
Your marketing goal is to move customers along the “search spectrum” from potential customers to repeat customers. If your SEO efforts cater only to potential customers, you run the risk of losing former and repeat customers.
For example, if a customer is familiar with your business, they still expect quick and easy access to information such as your phone number, location, or hours of operation.
Make sure this is an easy task.
If they don’t remember your domain name, customers will most likely perform a search on Google to find answers to their questions.
This is where proper SEO, the content and coding of your website design, pays dividends for your business.
Search Engines
Your customers don’t really “see” your SEO.
What they “see” are the results of your SEO efforts utilizing a search engine like Google.
For example, a potential customer may perform an online search for “foot doctor in montgomery al”, whereas a repeat customer might search for “dr smiths phone number in montgomery”.
In the first example, a generic search has been performed without prior knowledge of the existence of your business. Your website should be optimized so that it ranks well on the search engine results page (aka SERP) in response to the keyword search, “foot doctor in montgomery al”.
In the second example, a more specific search such as “dr smiths phone number in montgomery” should rank your website very near or at the number 1 position for a repeat customer.
Both keyword searches should enable customers to find your business.
Properly applied SEO techniques enable your business website to rank for a variety of keyword searches.
Additional examples:
- “yogurt shop in prattville al” – A potential customer that doesn’t know your business exists.
- “prattville al yogurt on main street” – A former or potential customer with some prior knowledge of the general location of your business.
- “henry’s yogurt shop phone number” – A repeat/loyal customer that is ready to call your business.
As you can see, SEO plays an integral part in your online marketing and website design strategies.
“Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be.” ~ Robert Brault