Over the past few decades, the marketing landscape has changed immensely. It’s hard to keep up with all of the advancements in technology, at least for many of us. In fact, “SEO” might not mean all that much to you yet.
To stay modern and competitive as businesses here in Chicago, it’s important that we keep up with the trends as much as possible. A huge part of that is tapping into the power of SEO, which stands for “search engine optimization.” Today, we’ll be explaining how it fits into a modernized marketing strategy.
Admittedly, it can be a bit difficult to implement. There are services like Chicago SEO Scholar that offer some guidance, especially when it comes to our local area. It could be worth a look before we continue on if you aren’t familiar with search engines and the general structure of optimization for them.
What is SEO, and How Does it Work?
As we mentioned above, the acronym stands for “search engine optimization.” That doesn’t explain very much, though, so let’s examine it a bit more closely. It’s a process that most search engines use, such a Google or Bing.
Essentially, when someone searches a word or phrase, the engine generates results based on a few different factors. Two of them are relevance and quality of the content, both of which are quite important for the eventual rating that a site receives. As businesses, we can learn how this works and use it to generate more organic clicks for our websites.
While it might not seem like that big of a deal, there are several components involved that can take some expertise to truly get the hang of. One such is the idea of keywords – in fact, there is a lot of research done daily to watch the trending keywords for a given topic or field. After all, one of the biggest ways that search engines rates results is on relevance, and key words are part of that.
We can see this most obviously on social media, which you can read about in this blog if you’re curious. However, we can apply these techniques outside of the social media sphere since it’s a difficult space to navigate. Usually, it’s a good idea to start social media, but to focus on polishing up your own website before you dedicate a ton of time and energy to that.
Methodology and Results
There are a number of ways that we can implement search engine optimization techniques into our web-based content. We hinted at a few of them above, of course. One of them could be to overhaul your website, making it more user-friendly and accessible. This way, engines will rank you higher on the list of results for certain searches inherently.
Learning the algorithm can be tricky. It’s why so many small and local businesses here in Chicago have started to work with SEO services, so they can focus on the other parts of keeping their organization running properly. A part of improving our ratings is ensuring that our sites are accessible, which you can learn more about here: https://www.ada.gov/resources/web-guidance/.
Beyond the accessibility, though, there’s also the matter of keeping the quality of the content high. This means providing engaging copy for the site. Again, this may not be everyone’s forte or cup of tea since the writing involved can be considered “dull.” That’s where external services may come in handy.
Why should we worry about quality? It’s part of how websites are rated in the search engine algorithm. They watch for certain “red flags,” such as repeated words and phrases or other types of spam. Essentially, the goal is to push AI generated content further down, rewarding the work of real authors who are creating similar content.
Results of Using SEO Techniques
Once you start to incorporate search engine optimization into your website content, you should start to notice a difference immediately. This is especially true if you’re getting outside help since the changes can be implemented quicker than if you were doing it on your own. The biggest thing will likely be more organic clicks for your page.
What does more clicks equal? Ideally it means more sales, but at least, it’s a way to garner more attention for your business. If you create a newsletter or email list that visitors can sign up for, it’s a way of generating solid sales leads. Therefore, these strategies can definitely garner you more leads than you were getting before, just based on that.
While it might be intimidating to use SEO in your business, there are plenty of ways to make it easier. Remember that you don’t have to do everything on your own – there are SEO services right here in Chicago that can help you optimize your site on a local level.