SEO, or search engine optimization, involves combining certain research, tools, and tactics with a pinch of luck to increase your website’s visibility in Google search results. It’s all about understanding user intent to serve up your brand when a customer is searching for related products or services.
For example, let’s say someone searches for “pineapple cocktail recipes”. If that’s what our website was all about, we’d want to be at the top of page one for those search results. But we’ll leave the bartending to someone else.
Sadly, roughly 91% of websites get no search traffic, for one of two reasons. First, they don’t invest in SEO. Or second, they’ve done SEO the wrong way—trying to manipulate search when they could have gotten better results by being helpful and relevant to their audience.
Google holds 84% of the global search market, making it, by far, the most important search engine. So, if you’re not actively taking steps to increase visibility, you are invisible in search.
Why is SEO Important?
93% of website visits now begin with an online search. Over half of this traffic is from the “organic search results”. These are the results you become visible in with SEO.
But getting this traffic from Google to your website isn’t a given. Google can return thousands of pages of search results from one search query. Yet, 99% of clicks go to a website on Page One.
So, if your website doesn’t appear on page one, your website could be missing out on massive amounts of steady traffic.
But that’s not all.
Search engine traffic is high-quality traffic. Being visible means you’re in the right place at the right time with the right message.
It’s no wonder an estimated 28% of local searches result in a purchase. 53% of customers research products and services online before buying. If your website doesn’t pop up at these critical moments in the buying decision, would-be customers go elsewhere.
Google Search Visibility Factors
Google has created, and continually updates, its proprietary algorithm for determining which websites to serve up to user queries. It ranks websites based on several factors. Of these factors, you’ll want to pay attention to these:
- Authority– Do people online see your website as a high-value, trustworthy source of information?
- Relevance – Do you have a page on your website highly relevant to the question someone is asking Google right now?
- User experience –Does your website deliver the experience your visitors want and expect? E.g., speed, navigation, mobile friendliness, and original, engaging content.
- Search engine navigability – Can a search engine understand your website and navigate it?
If you miss the mark on one of these, say goodbye to page one, and hello to the dark reaches of the Internet, where only the brave dare tread.
SEO Expertise
Page One SEO
We’ve established, 100% of search traffic goes to page one. This is the place you want to be. But how you appear here matters. With SEO, you’ll build your business on prime real estate.
Sure, it’s important to be on the list of websites served up as a list. But to truly become the who’s who of Page One, your website needs to show up with these:
- Rich snippets / Information cards
- “People Also Ask”
- Video previews
- Images
- Google Maps (for local businesses)
More than simply a website address and description, these serve up not just traffic, but conversions.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the optimization of technical requirements that allow you to appear in search results. It involves critical elements like:
- URL naming convention
- Speed
- Structure and navigation
- Inter-linking
- Site audits, mapping, monitoring, testing, and improvement
On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO involves optimizing what your potential customers see from your website both on the website itself and in the search results, which become an extension of your branded online presence. It involves:
- Keyword research
- Competitor research
- Using a special type of structured data to create the fun stuff we now see in search results: rich snippets, information cards, menus, video previews, images, and so on.
- Hyperlinking to support user experience
- Mobile friendliness: 63% of searches happen on mobile devices
- Landing pages that get your target audience to take a single desired action
Off-Page SEO
No website is an island, so we’ll skip the piña coladas for this one. Google understands authority and relevance based on how other websites relate to yours. Optimize off-page SEO using strategies like these:
- Adding complete and accurate information to Google My Business
- Filling out important directories
- Strong backlink acquisition strategy
- Building a social media presence
Content Marketing
Content marketing involves the creation of developing relevant, engaging and unique content for your website, social media, emails, and other channels. Content is critical to SEO and the business results you hope to achieve from it.
Through it, you increase the number of key searches your website becomes visible for, attract your target audience to your website, and turn that traffic into business leads, subscriptions, or sales—based on your business model. To optimize content marketing, you need:
- Audience research – You must know who your target audience is.
- Journey mapping – Learn what content will be helpful to your customers at different stages of the buyer’s journey.
- Keyword research – Understand what they’re searching for related to your brand.
- Competitor research – Find out what competitors are doing so you can do it better.
- Content creators – Create content that your audience want
At Pineapple Digital, we’ve been doing SEO before it became a buzzword. We stay on top of the latest trends, tools and techniques to bring best-in-class SEO strategies to your website and help you get to page one in search results. We keep a watchful eye on changes to the Google algorithm and adjust our SEO strategies accordingly. Contact us to learn how we can help you increase your organic web traffic and drive conversions.