25% of companies use SEO as one of their key tools when it comes to mobile optimization. If you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume that you’re wondering, ‘ what does SEO do for your website?”

We understand there are several components to SEO, and we’re here to share them with you. Our comprehensive guide is full of useful information that you will need to improve the number of search engine searches your site appears in.

Continue reading now, and by the end, you’ll know exactly why you need to rethink SEO and use it as one of the key tactics in your business.

What is SEO?

In simple terms, SEO stands for search optimization. The sole purpose of SEO is to improve the organic traffic that your website gains regularly.

Organic traffic is better than direct or paid traffic because that saves your company money. Under the organic traffic umbrella, consumers can find your page via:

A video link search
Industry searches
Academic searches
Product search

When you take the time to optimize your site, it will improve how many potential customers see your page when they are searching for products or services that your company specializes in.

Some businesses might think that SEO is only about sprinkling popular keywords throughout your content. But there are several elements of SEO that you need to know to be successful.

Below you can find each element that you need to focus on as a part of your entire SEO plan to ensure there is an improvement in the amount and quality of traffic your site receives.

Know Your Audience

Who are you creating your products for? At the beginning of your business, one of the first things you should’ve done is define your target audience.

By doing this, you ensure that every plan you implement going forward is directed to the people that will purchase and use your products and services. Before you come up with a solid SEO strategy, you need to define your target audience.

Some questions can help you define your audience and create an appropriate strategy. The questions you need to answer include:

Who’s your competition
What customers does your competition attract
What tactics do your competitors use pertaining to SEO
What are the pros and cons of the tactics used by competitors

If this is the first time, you’re considering using SEO, studying your competitors will be useful. You will have the same target audience; therefore, most of the strategy used by your competition is to attract the same clientele you want to attract.

By studying your competition, you’ll have an idea of how they implement their strategies and whether the strategies are helping them thrive in the industry. Think about how you can use the strategies you’ve noted to your advantage.

Keep in mind that you will need to tweak the strategies your competition uses to work for your business.

Understand Your User’s Intent

It’s not helpful to sprinkle keywords throughout your content if you’ve got no understanding of what the intent is behind the keywords that consumers search. For example, someone may search ‘dress patterns that I want to sew” to begin their search.

As they continue to search, they begin to type in other variations such as ‘DIY dress patterns’ or ‘dress patterns on clearance.’ What you don’t realize is that each of these variations can link back to your page in some way.

It’s understood that you will need to do keyword research as a part of your SEO strategy, but you need to dive deeper and not just choose the keywords presented at the top. Do your research and ensure that you’re targeting some of the other keywords that most consumers will search as they dive into the search engine wormhole.

Check the Data

How will you know if an SEO campaign you launched is working if you don’t take the time to check the data reports presented? Data is an essential part of any strategy you implement because it lets you know what you’re doing right and other areas that need to be adjusted.

As time continues and people continue to use the internet for things they need, you’ve got to change as well. In the past, you might have been able to get away with not switching up your keyword strategy, but that won’t work if you want to be one of the top contenders in your industry.

Data should be reviewed regularly to allow your team to make the proper adjustments to your strategy. Another reason to check the analytics is to note the things that are working for your business and continue to use that specific piece in future campaigns.

Get Into the Technical

There is more to SEO than keywords and optimizing images and captions on your site. If you don’t take the time to think about the technical aspects that go into optimizing your website, it can create a mess that you’ll need to clean up later on if you wish to see an increase in site traffic.

Part of implementing your SEO strategy properly is understanding how to use plugins or schema markups to help the site run efficiently. Your site should run smoothly without delay for consumers.

If you visit a site and it takes a long time to load, chances are you will find another site that took the time to ensure the technical aspects of their site were configured to work for the customer. If the technical aspect of your site isn’t done in the right way, you’re essentially driving more customers to your competitors.

Why Do You Need SEO?

With more information on the elements that go into SEO, it still doesn’t let you know why you need SEO besides to increase organic website traffic. SEO helps to increase the visibility of your business website.

It makes it more searchable and helps you expand your reach to customers looking for products and services that your company offers. These are just a few of the things that SEO can do for you and your business.

When implemented properly, the advantages and payoff are limitless. Here are some of the reasons you need SEO.

1. Increases Your Credibility

People are only going to continue to seek your company out if they can trust you. As you continue to nourish your relationships with customers and potential customers, the trust in the relationship will continue to increase.

If you don’t take the time to use SEO throughout your site the way it’s meant to be used, it decreases the credibility of your business. Or, if you’re posting information that isn’t accurate, this will also affect your company’s credibility.

If consumers conclude that they can’t trust you or the content published by your site, you’re going to lose business. There are several things you can do to increase your credibility, including:

Machine-learned signals
Using backlinks that are of quality
Optimizing all elements of your site pages

Thinking about these aspects of your website helps to establish authority in your industry and on the internet. Keep in mind that the authority you’re looking for isn’t going to happen overnight.

You will need to exercise patience as you continue to build and strengthen your brand. Building trust takes time, but you can help the process along by always presenting things to customers that are of value and high quality.

2. Improves the User Experience

We’re going to be honest with you that most customers don’t care about the amount of money you invest in your website. The only thing they’re focused on is having access to the products and services they need without a hassle.

When we say to improve the user experience, it means to make things as smooth as possible for customers. As customers visit your site, they should be able to access the pages they need and find what they’re looking for.

One thing that will help you to understand if the strategy you’ve used to improve the user experience is working is monitoring your bounce rate. Your bounce rate is when people visit your site, and before they check out any of the content or pages of the site, they ‘bounce.’

You want consumers to stay on your site as long as possible and keep coming back for more.

3. Directly Impacts the Buying Cycle

One of the most significant ways reasons that you need SEO is because it can impact the buying cycle. Before consumers make purchases, they do their homework about the company they’re going to buy from.

They want to know what past customers have to say about the products and services offered by your company. It will also let customers know when you’re running a deal that they won’t want to miss out on.

With increased visibility, it can increase the number of customers you have, which in turn, over time, will increase your company revenue. We recommend that you hire a company that specializes in managing the reviews left about your business.

Knowing what customers are saying about your company can help you to make changes in the future that will improve your customer’s experience.

4. Keeps You at the Top

If you’re following the changes in SEO and making adjustments as these changes come your way, it will pay off big time. The companies that you see at the top of your industry are the businesses that have focused on and tweaked their strategy according to the current trend.

While you might not have time to sit and monitor the algorithm changes that come with SEO, some companies specialize in this. They can monitor it for you and make the necessary changes to ensure that you continue to show up in as many searches as possible.

This will increase the amount of natural traffic to your website, and once you’ve got consumers to visit your website, that’s the first step into converting leads. The goal of lead conversion is to turn a potential customer into a paying customer.

5. It’s Cost-Effective

If you don’t have a large budget to dedicate to your SEO campaign, you don’t have to worry. When you compare the cost of SEO and implementing it compared to other forms of paid marketing, it’s on the cheaper end of the scale.

Although it’s cheaper, that doesn’t mean that it won’t pay off in the long run for your company. It will benefit you and improve your companies bottom line.

When you’ve got more money that can be kept in the budget, you can allocate those funds to other areas. Or you can save the funds to be used in the future when you’re in the process of launching another campaign idea.

Before launching your SEO campaign, take the time to research your company’s needs and create a budget that will allow you to get the things that will help your company thrive.