What Is SEO?

Do You Wanna Know What SEO Is?
Awesome! I’m going to simplify it for you so you understand everything.

When you’re done reading this post, you should understand:

1. What SEO is

2. The components of SEO

3. How search engine optimization is done

4. The benefits of doing it

5. How to find the best agency to optimize a website

KEEP IN MIND: Understanding SEO isn’t always easy.  But in this post, I will break down the process as much as I can!

via GIPHY

What The Heck Is SEO???

This is a question I hear A LOT.  Especially as the owner of a NJ SEO agency, my customers are always inquiring!  And I do my best to explain to them as much as I can.

As the owner of an SEO company, I believe it’s my duty to explain SEO (and everything that goes into it).  I don’t just expect clients to throw their hard-earned money at me without understanding what I’m doing!

BUT I’M GONNA BE COMPLETELY HONEST: This crucial marketing process is not that easy to explain to the average business owner.  If you’re still using a flip top phone, you might want to skip over this post!

via GIPHY

But if you stick around and read through everything, I’m sure you’ll get the main points.  You’ll at least understand what search engine optimization is and how it can help your business.

LET’S START FROM THE BEGINNING!

What Does The Term SEO Stand For?

The term SEO stands for search engine optimization.

IN OTHER WORDS: SEO is a process that enhances or “optimizes” the performance of your website.  The main goal for doing this is so that the search engines (such as Google) understand what your website is about.

THE RESULT: If your website’s intent is understood, it can be delivered to people who might be looking for it when conducting a web search!

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE:

Bob needs to find a dentist in his town in New Jersey.  So he does a Google Search.  You can see he searched for the term “Parsippany Dentist”.

You See LOCAL Search Results First

The results pop up but Bob will probably be most interested in the local search results.  These are the results that are displayed above the organic search results in the Google Maps 3 pack.  They are the result of local SEO.

The results that appear in the search results populate for a few different reasons.  I’m going to give you the most basic reasons these results appear:

• they are businesses in the location Bob specifies (Parsippany dentist)
• the website clearly indicates that it’s about a Parsippany dentist

NOW IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO:  Now imagine Bob does a search online to find a Parsippany dentist and listings for florists come up instead?  This would obviously be very confusing!

via GIPHY

This doesn’t really happen though, to be honest.  The search engines are very sophisticated and are able to understand which results are relevant.  They look for clear signals from websites and listings in order to deliver the right results to searchers.

SEO is what helps in the process of delivering your information to searchers who might be looking for your business or service.  Without it, your website and business listings would essentially be lost online!

I’M GONNA BE HONEST (AGAIN!): The last thing you want to be wondering is where is my website.  That’s just one reason you should hire a web design agency that can also do SEO!

Organic Search Results Are Also Important

Organic search results are also vitally important.  The websites that appear organically in search engine results under the local results are “organic search results”.

These results appear after typing a word or phrase in a search engine search bar after you have hit enter.

Organic search is the primary form of traffic on the internet. Consequently, it is very important to have an optimized website for this reason.

4 Components Of Search Engine Optimization

There are several components of search engine optimization.  Each of these components has different strategies to increase ranking.

Included in the 4 parts of SEO are the things that are done to the website on the website, the research thats done beforehand, and everything that goes on off of the website.  Every SEO strategy should be well rounded to include each part in order to get the best results!

I will illustrate this with an image below.

Basically there are four different parts to SEO.

Keyword Research And Analysis

Keyword research and analysis is the starting point of any and every SEO campaign. Whether you are doing agency SEO or enterprise SEO, you will still need to research keywords properly.

A company that needs moving company SEO for example would not use the same keywords as a real estate SEO campaign would require.  With keyword research, you reverse engineer the search process from a potential customer’s perspective.  Then you optimize the site for keywords your prospects might be using to search for businesses such as yours.

On-Page SEO

With on-page SEO, the structural elements of a website are optimized.  Everything on the website (or on-page) is perfected in order for the search engines to better understand the website and what it’s about.

Take a look at the image below for the elements of an optimized web-page:

Some of the common on-page SEO elements include:

• SEO content
• Optimized H1-H3 headings
• Page Speed
• Optimized title tag
• Image alt text
• Meta description optimization
• URL restructuring and optimization

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is everything that is done off of a website to increase it’s ranking online.

Some common off-page elements include:

• Link-building
• Forums
• Blog comments
• Guest posting
• Social media

Local SEO

Local SEO includes a bunch of different things.

Some of these things include:

• location specific pages
• business citations and directory listings
• Google My Business optimization
• review generation

The Main Goal Of SEO

The purpose of SEO is usually just one thing.  It is to give your website a #1 ranking spot in search engine results.  On the other hand, if you are unable to get the number 1 spot, SEO aims to get you to the first page (at least).

Lots of businesses make sales from organic traffic daily.  Accordingly, SEO has become a way to signal to search engines the websites that deserve the most attention. Without SEO, the internet would have no organization.  The signals that SEO produces are essential in establishing which sites on the web are most important.

The ultimate goal of optimizing a website is to make it rank higher in search results!  And the ultimate goal of SEO for a business is to get more organic leads and make more money!

via GIPHY

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE: If you are a pediatric dentist in Ridgewood, NJ you would want this scenario to take place:

A potential patient goes to Google in need of a pediatric dentist for one of her children.  In the Google search bar, she types “pediatric dentists in Ridgewood, NJ”.

Google will populate the page and thousands of proceeding pages with websites of pediatric dentists.  But the question is, how does YOUR WEBSITE make it to page 1 in Google search results?

The Importance of Optimizing For Search

If you have a business, you may be wondering what search engine optimization can do.  Additionally, you may want to know why you need SEO services to get traffic to your site.  Furthermore, you may want to know why SEO is crucial to any website.

Below we will look at the answers to all of your important questions. Additionally, we will look at SEO strategies to learn about how they affect your business.  Without optimizing your website, you literally would be lost in the world wide web. You would be a needle in a haystack!

Why Should I Optimize My Website?

It is crucial that any website be optimized properly.  Currently, almost all websites require optimization.  Without it, a business would not get any natural traffic.

If you are here, you may not be convinced that you need SEO services.  Or you may not quite understand what it means to optimize a site for search engines. Here are some reasons why you need to employ SEO strategy to any website:

• increase traffic

• improve user experience (UX)

• build credibility

• get more phone calls

• make more money!

Search engines determine how websites remain in the top spots using specific search terms. They consider a lot of things. A few of these things are: website popularity, traffic, links, quality of content, searcher behavior, site speed, site architecture and satisfaction of visitors to your site (measured in different ways).

If the factors listed above are absent, your site simply will not get ranked.  In other words, your website would not be searchable.  If Google determines that your site is not relevant, your customers will not be able to find your website unless they plug in the exact URL.

As a final point, SEO send signals to search engines.  This is important because it moves your website higher on the list of results into the leading spot.  Most people only look at search results on the first page of Google.  This is part of the reason why SEO is so vital.

How To Find The Best SEO Agency

At this point, we’re pretty sure you understand how SEO works and what do SEO companies do.  Additionally, you probably have a very good idea about how SEO is done.  But that doesn’t help you with another problem you may face.

Many people want to know how to find the best SEO company. They want a reliable way to get more business leads and get more web traffic.  As you know, SEO is a great way to do so!

I would advise the following ways to find an SEO agency:

• get references
• read reviews
• do a Google search

If you do these three things to find an SEO agency, you are sure to find a good one.  Keep in mind, SEO is a very difficult term to rank for.  So any ranking SEO agency is probably a great one to choose!

HELPFUL TIP: Are you in search of an excellent agency for your business SEO services? Contact Bizmap LLC for a free video SEO audit.  We’ll tell you where you show up in search results!

Conclusion

We hope this blog post has explained a few important things to you.  And if it didn’t, please read it over more than once.  We hope you learned what is SEO and wish you luck!