This article defines SEO for the reader from ZenithRise Group, an SEO agency in California with clients around the country.
To many clients, even those within marketing, digital marketing is a vast unknown. It’s difficult to keep pace with the options out there. And there are many. With thousands of media options online (and in the seven figures if you think about Google’s Display Network), a full understanding of all the options takes a lifetime. This overwhelm is what we most often hear with clients that are looking to build their online presence.
We reassure them that the principles of sound marketing still apply to digital. And that digital is an execution channel – an important execution channel – but an execution channel nonetheless. And within this channel, there are many options: Social, PPC Search, PPC Display, etc. – here’s where the confusion can set in. But we take clients back down to the basics.
Fundamentally the website is the overarching digital asset that serves to attract audiences, give them information to convert them to the mid-funnel and ultimately encourage them to close. However, most often we are reminding clients that the one digital execution that often gets overlooked is the most important one. And the one on which a digital marketing program should be built: SEO.
SEO essentially means the process of making your website as strong as possible for Google (mostly) to be able to organically rank your website as highly as possible without the use of paid ads. And to get this ranking, Google rewards websites on the content’s usefulness and how easily easily Google can index for search.
Three areas are examined in detail. These are:
- On-Page SEO is an assessment of the relevance of the content based on heading titles, section titles and keywords used to search in your category. It also looks at the amount and quality of information provided (quantity will not override quality) and assesses for how well your content is laid out from a customer understanding perspective.
- Off-Page SEO refers largely to the quality of the websites that link back to your websites. Generally the higher the quality of websites making reference to your website (with a link to a page or section), the better the Off-Page SEO.
- Technical SEO is determined by, among others, how few errors you have on your website, how well labelled your website map is for Google crawlers, its security features and other technical elements of your website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the foundational pillar upon which all other digital marketing efforts are built. Effective SEO leads to higher organic rankings on Google, which in turn leads to greater visibility with your audiences and ultimately greater conversions down the funnel. In an increasingly competitive digital world, embracing SEO as the cornerstone of your strategy is essential for long-term success.
