SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In the simplest terms, good SEO optimizes your online visibility. This means that the more people see your website, the more your online traffic will increase and the greater your chances of offering your product or service to a greater number of people. SEO helps create long-term value for your brand.
A good ranking and favorable location help raise your brand's profile. SEO is important because it makes search results fair. It reduces the ability to manipulate these results as much as possible, so that the sites that appear in every search are there because they deserve it. Hard work and a website that attracts visitors correlate with high search engine rankings, so if your site meets these criteria, you'll have a better chance of showing up in the results.
SEO is important for businesses because it provides organizations with the visibility they need to attract customers in this digital era. Eighty-one percent of customers and 94% of B2B shoppers will search online before making a purchase, so brands that don't have a strong online presence will find themselves lagging behind the competition. Online businesses have become extremely competitive, especially in the current global business climate. This has exponentially increased the importance of companies having a strong online presence.
Having an effective SEO strategy not only gives your company a strong online presence, it also allows it to grow and thrive. Many brands and companies know (or think they know) that they need SEO for their digital properties and the benefits they will get from the SEO work that is implemented on their behalf. SEO is made up of multiple elements, and knowing what they are and how they work is key to understanding why SEO is so important. But even a site that hasn't implemented a ton of intense SEO recommendations will improve if basic SEO best practices are used on an honest website with a decent user experience.
Local SEO aims to optimize your digital properties for a specific environment, so that people can find you quickly and easily, allowing them to get one step closer to making a transaction. Let's say you have a restaurant, and local SEO will ensure that when people in your area search for the best restaurants in town, they will find your site. If you are creating an online jewelry store and you are determined to position yourself with the keyword “jewelry”, your SEO will be more expensive and take longer than the SEO of a children's jewelry for “fine jewelry for children”. You need a trustworthy SEO partner who fully understands your business and who works with you to implement SEO solutions designed to help you reach more people and earn more revenue online.
Local SEO improves that visibility and allows potential customers to find the answers and the companies that provide them. SEO professionals do this by optimizing the brand's website and its content, including local citations and backlinks, as well as regional listings relevant to the location and business sector to which the brand belongs. Another reason why SEO is critical is because all the time you spend generating great content and on-page SEO optimization improves the usability of your site. In particular, SEO helps consumers when they need it, and implementing strong, quality SEO on a brand's website and digital properties will benefit brands and their marketing efforts.