SEO industry is expected to reach $103. 24 billion in 2025 by a report in PRNewswire. But what is in there for small, medium or large businesses all around the world?
What is SEO?
Technically SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization. In simple words this is a process to rank your website higher in search engine’s organic search results.
Search Engine
There are more than 1 billion websites over World Wide Web and they are growing every second. People want to find information, products and services out of these 1 billion websites. This gave birth to search engines.
A search engine is a software system that finds best results according to your search query. Search engines crawl and save the World Wide Web in a way that it brings your most relevant results.
Major examples of search engines are Google, Bing and Yandex.
Search Results
People have the opportunity to enter their queries or questions in a single or multiple words. These search queries are called keywords.
While users enter a keyword like “Shoes”, search engines bring best results regarding to shoes. If user ask for “ladies shoes”, it will return the relevant searches only.
Every search result page displays almost 10 – 15 results. Out of which almost 10 are organic results.
Organic vs. Paid Results
Every search result page shows paid search results on top of page. These are the results brought by advertisers who pay search engines for each click or view of the ad displayed there.
Organic search results are the best pages chosen by search engines which are the best fit for your keyword. Although paid results are also relevant but organic results are natural and they do not pay search engines to be displayed there.
Who needs SEO?
Anyone who needs brand awareness or lead generation for their products / services. Every website needs SEO regardless of its niche. This will improve your website performance, fixes website errors and improve user experience.
Why is SEO important?
In digital marketing we have many options like social media marketing, email marketing, paid advertisement and SEO. Why everyone recommend search engine optimization this much?
Return over Investment (ROI)
SEO provides best ROI over all other marketing channels. SEO can be started with small investments and in return you will not be disappointed. No matter what budgets do you plan in beginning small or medium budgets but the return is always satisfactory.
Long Term
SEO is always being done with the plans for long term mindset. Once your website is in higher rankings in search engines, you will see its results there for many years.
The process of SEO should be continuous even if you got 1st spot in search engines. Keep in mind that your competitors will be working as well to overcome your spot. So, keep up the good work always.
Quality Leads
Customers from search engines are almost 90% ready clients. These are the people who are looking for specific products/services and reached you. They have gone through your website as well, these leads are always quality leads and should be dealt with care.
How to do SEO?
Like any other marketing campaign, SEO is a process of different analyses. This covers but not limited to market value, target customer intentions and competitor analyses.
It also includes improvement of your website content for users and search engine’s understanding alike. It fixes your website bugs and errors which might be annoying for your target users.
You may hire SEO agency for your website or if you are on a budget you should consider finding a small business freelance SEO consultant.
Can I do SEO myself?
Yes, anyone can learn SEO. You may also check my article on SEO as a Career to understand if this is the right fit for you.
Although I do not recommend it to any small business owner to learn and work on SEO. As per my experience you should hire a SEO expert and focus on your core business.
You already need to work on many aspects of your business administration, marketing, finance and operations. Cost wise you will end up paying more on your website SEO rather what you pay to any expert.
Every professional uses their own SEO strategies. Following are the fundamental steps.
SEO Basics
- Configure Google Analytics
- Setup Google Search Console
- Import in Bing Webmaster tools
- Install and configure SEO plugin (WordPress)
- Create a Robots.txt file
- Setup .htaccess file
- Check Search Console for manual actions
- Make sure that your website is indexed
- Setup basic social media accounts
- Setup and optimize Google My Business
Keyword Research
- Identify your competitors
- Find your main keywords
- Find long-tail keyword variations
- Create a keyword map
- Analyze the intent of pages that rank
- Identify questions that are being asked for every keyword to enhance website content and keywords
Technical SEO
- Check for duplicate versions of your website
- Find & fix crawl errors
- Improve site speed
- Fix broken internal & outbound links
- Find and fix HTTP links on HTTPS pages
- Make sure website is mobile-friendly
- Use a SEO-friendly URL structure
- Add structured data
- Check the page depth
- Check temporary 302 redirects
- Find and fix redirect chains & loops
On-Page & Content
- Fix duplicate
- Missing & truncated title tags
- Find & fix duplicate missing meta descriptions
- Find and fix multiple H1 tags
- Improve title & meta tags and page content
- Run a content audit and prune content
- Optimize images (naming, ALT tags, size)
- Improve internal linking
- Find & fix keyword cannibalization
- Find & fix orphaned site pages
- Validate if the content of your website is up to date as per your industry standards
Off-Page SEO
- Analyze your competitor’s link profile
- Conduct a link intersect analysis
- Turn unlinked mentions into links
- Find new link building opportunities
How much time SEO needs?
As per Google’s recommendation SEO needs 4 – 12 months to be in action (if implemented correctly). This is where many small businesses get confused that they need to wait for almost 1 year for the results.
I do understand with their reservations. They need to pay every month to SEO experts but with no results. But this is how search engine optimization works and its truth.
I know many cases where customers ended up by fake SEO experts who promised that they will get results in 3 months only. Save yourself.
Let me break up my personal experience of more than 10 years. I got first inquiry from a project with in first 7 days and in some cases we did not get any single inquiry in months.
Results depends on many things that include your market niche, target audience and your competition. You need to have patience and you will see results by yourself.
Conclusion
SEO is essential for every website and is recommended for small businesses and startups. I always request startups and small businesses to start working on search engine optimization as soon as possible. SEO have a promising long term future for your business.
I tried to explain it in easiest words but if you still have any questions please feel free to drop your questions below. I will answer every question.