Entering the digital marketing landscape means getting familiar with SEO and how you can use them to your advantage.
In this section of our Introduction to Digital Marketing series, we want to break down the basics of what SEO is, what aspects to focus on, and why it’s so important for digital marketers.
What is SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is defined as the process of “increasing quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results” (Moz). The key aspects of SEO focus on the elements of quality, quantity, and organic – so creating professional and valuable content on your website that drives up natural engagement, not through ad-based clicks.
This organic element is done by using keywords. Keywords help marketers figure out what people are looking for and how they can create content that fills in those gaps.
Researching phrases and words that consumers are searching for means picking words with high search rates and with low competition to guarantee a good amount of traffic on your website. Alternatively, you could also integrate keywords into your content that are short-tail (broad generic phrases like “books”), long-tail (such as “second-hand books for sale”), or contain local keywords (that specify a location, like “second-hand books in Toronto”).
These are ad-based search engine results, so they are not organic SEO.
However, these non-paid results are a result of strong SEO, as they have targeted keywords, both local and long-tail ones, to show up during this search query.
When picking out which keywords to use, there are three main things to consider
Google uses its algorithm to determine which pages rank on their search engine by “crawling” across the content on your website to see which ones are:
a) high quality and,
b) relevant to searchers.
Quality and relevance can be established through on-page SEO or off-page SEO.
On-page SEO
As the name suggests, this means tailoring the elements on your website. For example, editing your blog title tags to directly target individuals searching a specific topic. Even focusing on the meta descriptions of each website page is integral to informing search engines of what information you’re relaying.
Some other on-page SEO elements that impact ranking and visibility include the page-loading speed and mobile-friendliness as it shows your website is easily accessible to users.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is something that isn’t directly in your control, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely out of your control. When someone shares your blog post on social media or links to your website from their own, they are helping your site gain visibility and ranking on search engines as it shows that you are a popular, credible, and high-quality source.
Backlinks are arguably the most important type of off-page SEO, with three forms that show how you can use them:
Local SEO
By directing your pages to be location-specific or creating business pages on Google Maps, you can improve your visibility in your desired geographic market, like the ones below.
To recap, the reason that SEO is so important to marketers is two-fold:
As with any digital marketing tactic, the goal of SEO is to reach out to potential consumers through designing your content to increase rankings and be more visible to them on search engines.
Being a valuable authority in a specific market showcases the trustworthiness of your business, which will hopefully then be reflected on other websites. This will naturally draw in consumers if they see others trusting your information, as well as showing Google’s algorithm that you should show up higher on the search engine rankings.
How We Can Help
Katch Media has the experience and expertise you need as one of Toronto’s premier digital marketing agencies. Entering the Toronto digital marketing landscape can be a daunting task but with Katch Media on your side, we can make something like SEO seem like a walk in the park!
