Wondering what all the fuss is about regarding SEO? Here are some basics to key you in on why it's essential for your business's success.

I’m sure there are a lot of you out there who don’t exactly know what SEO is or what it can do for your company.

So let me share what I’ve learned this past week about search engine optimization (SEO), how it can benefit your company, and even some little tricks to make your website easier to read.

I’ll keep things pretty simple and expand on them as we go. With that in mind, keep checking back for more posts on how SEO can help your business.

First and foremost, what is SEO?

At its core, SEO is the practice of optimizing your website so that your target audience is able to find you.

For instance, if you provide web design services in the Bismarck, ND area, you would want to optimize your website to be found by potential customers looking for web design in the Bismarck area.

If you’re still a little confused on the meaning of SEO, here’s a good article by 60 experts defining search engine optimization.

You’re probably wondering how this is done.

Well, we aren’t going to give away all our secrets but I can say that SEO begins with understanding your customers.

What keyword phrases do your customers search for when looking for your type of business?

If they come to your website, what information are they looking for? Your contact information or your company values?

If you know more about your customers, you can gear your website toward their needs and be more easily found in search engines.

Your number one goal in terms of SEO is to be at the top of any search engine that pertains to your services. Let’s take an example from the Bismarck web design company again.

When a potential customer does a Google search for Bismarck web design companies, you want your web design website to populate at the top of the search engine. You also want to be number one for searches such as:

Bismarck website design, web design in Bismarck, or even something more specific like professional web design, Bismarck, ND.

This way your website is more likely to be seen by customers searching for different variations of the same thing.

Right about now you’re probably wondering why you would pay for SEO services when it sounds like you could do it on your own.

Let’s put it this way. If you have limited experience in shingling, are you going to attempt to shingle your own house or pay an expert to do it?

Chances are, if you have very little experience in shingling, your roof will experience some leaks in the coming year and won’t perform as well as you hoped.

However, your investment in hiring a professional company will be well worth the cost because you will have peace of mind that you won’t have water damage the first time it rains.

SEO services are very similar. If you pay the experts to optimize your website, you won’t experience the frustration of having countless hours of hard work produce bad results.

I’m still learning the vast array of SEO benefits and how to implement them. However, this week alone I’ve seen some amazing examples of how a website’s exposure exploded overnight because of SEO.

If done correctly, SEO has some amazing benefits.

I would say your number one benefit is being able to market to your target area without paying a dime for advertising. Sounds like a pretty awesome thing, doesn’t it?

If your website is correctly optimized, it will naturally show up in the top ten search results in Google. Obviously, this helps you because people are more likely to click on your website if it shows up at the top of a search engine.

I don’t know about you but I would be willing to pay for a service that allows me to advertise naturally without paying for advertisements.

Another great benefit of SEO is that it improves all aspects of your website.

A good SEO specialist will optimize the number of clicks your website receives, your alt text, the readability of your website, how fast your pages load, how many keywords you use, how often those keywords are used throughout the website, how your pages are organized, and so much more.

They even look at what your target audience types into a search engine when looking for services similar to yours. Based on this information a good SEO specialist can generate good keywords for your website.

Finally, let’s talk a little about some easy tricks to give your website better flow. You really should leave this up to the experts, but I still believe a knowledgeable customer is a good customer.

First and foremost, if you want to keep readers engaged throughout your website, break the website up into smaller chunks.

If you don’t have a lot of pictures to add to your webpage, simply break up your longer paragraphs.

Have you noticed how easy it is to read this long post? It’s because I only keep one or two sentences in each paragraph.

If you have a lot of customers visit your website from their phones, this is especially true. Having to scroll through a long paragraph on your phone means you may lose your spot.

Another good idea to give your website a good flow is to make sure that each of your web pages have a clear intent. If a customer can’t tell what the page is about right away, they’re likely to leave.

In addition, if a customer should link to a secondary page on your website, you want all visitors to know where they are and what they’re reading.

If you haven’t gotten enough of SEO yet, check back later for future posts.

If there’s a specific topic you have questions on regarding SEO/digital, tell us in the comments and we may blog about it.

In the meantime, happy web surfing.