SEO (or ‘Search Engine Optimisation’) is about improving your website to get the pages to rank higher in search engines such as Google.
Higher rankings mean more traffic.
And more traffic means more customers (…if your website is well designed).
SEO can be highly technical, but it’s also very much about ‘people’. What are they searching for, what questions do they have, at what stage of researching or buying are they at.
Optimising for search is very much a science but it’s also an art too. Let’s break it down a bit more.
Why Is SEO Important?
Honest answer: it might NOT be important to your business (or at least not yet). Because SEO is just one way to get visitors to your website.
But it’s a very rare service, trade, profession or product that isn’t being searched for and researched online right now.
And people arriving from a Google search tend to be much better quality leads than those from paid advertising. People know when they’re responding to an advert and arrive at your website more ‘guarded’ and prepared to resist a sales pitch.
When people click on a search result there’s a greater level of trust. They ‘researched’ and found you. They chose to come to you (and yes, they can tell the difference in Google between a paid result and an ‘organic’ one).
SEO is important because (when done well) it identifies the many different ways customers can find you. And it guides those people into your ‘sales funnel’ in a more receptive frame of mind.
Good SEO Is Not What You Think
Most people think of SEO as some ‘dark art’ to unnaturally push their website to the top spot for their main keywords.
That’s not the way good SEO is done.
And good SEO is so much more than just keywords like “best electrician in Nelson”.
There are far more potential customers in the ‘research phase’. They have a (non-critical) problem they are trying to solve but don’t really know what they want yet. Good SEO gets you in front of those people, helps them and turns them into paying customers.
Of course if someone has a burst pipe then you may want to rank for “emergency plumber in Nelson”.
But good SEO is about identifying that people also search for “why are my pipes knocking” and “how to install a shower” (and a hundred other problems). Then helping those people understand the causes and solutions to those problems. Before explaining how to fix it and how your business can solve the problem for them.
Yes, SEO is also about technical stuff, meta tags, alt text, site speed, ‘backlinks’ etc.
But if you want to create an ever widening funnel to scoop up all those customers (that your competitors don’t even know about yet). Then SEO should start at a much higher level and be done consistently if you want ongoing growth of your business.
How Does SEO Work?
SEO starts by looking at what you already have.
We start this process off with a Website Audit.
This will identify any technical SEO problems that are holding your site back. Such as low quality pages that shouldn’t be indexed. Or poorly written meta titles (does your homepage meta title say ‘Home’..?). Or broken links and missing images etc.
Cleaning up these problems will often lead to some very useful gains.
This initial audit will identify any more general website problems too, which can be opportunities for some easy wins. Are there enough ‘calls to action’ (book now, buy now, contact us etc) and are they in all the right places. Is your phone number ‘click to call’ on mobile. Does the site even work properly on mobile (vital these days). Are your services explained in enough detail. Are the images up to date and show your business in the best light.
Again, fixing issues like these can lead to significant gains just by improving conversion rates of people already finding your site. As well as improve search rankings.
Once this initial phase of analysis and fixing is complete, then we can move into the steady SEO growth phase. This can be a combination of medium and long term goals.
Often there are pages that are ranking on page 2 or 3 of the search results. Pages in those positions rarely get any traffic, but with just a little work could move up to page 1 relatively quickly.
Meanwhile we can also start to widen that funnel and grow your site to get found for a lot more than just your main keywords.
At MyTechGuy we use a ‘content first’ approach with our SEO services to give Google exactly what they want. By helping your potential customers get answers and solve their problems.
This approach creates better leads because you’ve already demonstrated your knowledge and expertise. You’ve already helped that person understand their problem and identify the solution they need. It’s only natural that you’re now top of their list to provide that solution.
More website visitors, more leads and more sales. What’s not to love about SEO when done properly?