If you are new to marketing your business, or even if you have been representing your company for years and years, you probably hear about the importance of SEO to your marketing strategy. In the past, marketers needed to think about how to ensure their ads would show up in the phone book or would need to pursue large newspaper ads to get noticed. But today, in this world of smartphones and technology advancements, we need to think differently about how our business can be found. And, add to that the reality that it is easier than ever to start a business, but it is easier yet for that business to fail.
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it is the process of using key strategies on the internet to get more visitors to your site and content through search results on search engines. These search engines, especially the big players such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, serve millions of web users each day as those users search for answers to their queries and solutions to their problems. And if you have a website for your company, using effective SEO techniques can help your business to grow by driving more of the right customers to your website.
Why is SEO so important?
There are many reasons why your web strategy needs to take SEO into consideration. Here are just a handful of those reasons:
- Organic search is a significant element in the website performance for most businesses. It is also a critical component of the customer purchase cycle/sales funnel and plays an ultimate role in getting users to complete a conversion or engagement. Being highly noticeable as a credible resource by Google and other top search engines will always work in your brand’s favor. High-quality SEO and a strong website will help you take your brand where you want it to go.
- SEO will help you build trust and credibility for your brand. Creating high-quality content that is relevant to your audience and enables you to establish yourself as a thought leader and industry expert is a vital strategy for your organization. When you combine this content strategy with the inclusion of key search terms (keywords) and engaging headlines, will help your brand to establish authority through machine-learning signals, optimized content, etc.
- Today’s consumers are very well educated on how to find what they are looking for. And, if they can’t find what they want on your site, they get frustrated and are likely to abandon their visit, never to return. And thus, Google has learned how to decipher a positive or negative user experience. Positive user experience has become a vital element of your business’s website success. The intention of that is offering users the intelligence that they are seeking in fewer clicks. Quality SEO ensures a positive online user experience, leveraging it to work in your company’s favor.
- Using an SEO approach to communicate messaging for great deals, revolutionary products or services, and the gravity and influence of what you offer your customers can ultimately change the game. Undoubtedly, when SEO is done right, this will also impact the buying cycle in a positive manner. Brands absolutely need to be visible in all of the essential places that customers expect or require them to ensure a worthy connection to be made.
- Perhaps one of the best benefits of SEO is that compared to your other marketing tactics, it doesn’t cost all that much. The payoff, however, of smart SEO will likely be quite considerable in terms of your brand’s benefit and bottom line. Think of SEO as less of a marketing expense, and more of a business investment.
It is vital to remember that SEO is not a one and done strategy. Instead, SEO is an initiative that you need to think of for the long-term. The more SEO effort, time, and budget that your marketing team commits to it, the better your website will be, and the more likely that you will be able to gain credibility as a worthy challenger in its market.
How to get started with SEO for your website
If you are building a new website or re-inventing your existing website, there are some key steps that you should follow as you get started. While it is always best to think about SEO when you are setting up your website from the very beginning, it is never too late to reinvent and revise your website’s approach.
- Consider your domain name very carefully. There are tools available to help you determine the right domain name for your website. Hostgator offers a quick means to help you come up with the right name. But, if you want a more sophisticated approach to thinking through your domain and to develop your overall SEO strategy, companies such as Shop Style Design specialize in eCommerce site design and strategy.
- Select a reputable eCommerce platform that can grow with you. Shopify offers an easy to navigate platform that customers find intuitive so that they can find what they are looking for quickly. The best platforms will ensure an architecture that is highly navigable and provides priority for the most important pages on your site.
- Conduct keyword research so that you can better understand the terms that customers are popping into search engines when they are looking for products or services similar to what you sell. Google’s keyword planner is an excellent resource for this to help you get started.
- Remember that many customers will look at your website from their mobile device, so be sure to prioritize mobile-friendly design options.
- Optimize your page URLs. Customize the URL of every page on your website to the best of your ability. URLs should be easy to commit to memory and to communicate what’s on the page.
- Optimize your title tags, images, headings, and text without keyword stuffing. Organized content will resonate better with your customers and search engines. And, be sure to link to other pages within your site from your content. This helps your customers to get more critical information and keeps them on your site longer, which is important as they are developing their opinion of your business as an expert in its space.
- Never underestimate the value of your meta descriptions. While these descriptions will not directly influence your search rankings, they will play a role in your click-through rates that comes from the search results.
Help is available to ensure a fully optimized and SEO-friendly website build
If you want to think through your eCommerce website strategy, contact Shop Style Design for help. Our professionals consist of skilled designers and developers who have been in your shoes and have worked with hundreds of other businesses to design effective and engaging websites. At Shop Style Design, we are focused on using a relationship-centric approach in our work and will ensure that you never feel like just a number. Every customer is a partner, and we are here to assist you every step of the way in helping you to improve the eCommerce experience for your customers. Contact Us to connect and receive your free consultation.
