Hello readers!! Welcome back to another week of my blog :)) How was your week so far? I had a busy week due to assignments but it’s all good because it has been really productive! I have a lot to share about today’s topic so please do read till the end!! I am sure this article will help you in your marketing job in the future so let me get started!
WHAT IS SEO AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a webpage in a search engine’s unpaid results.
This is important particularly for business owners as effective SEO can drive traffic to your site, leads and sales which can potentially lead to profits for your business! There are billions of people in the world who search for many things on the web therefore this traffic is important because it can be highly specific intent traffic!
SEO GLOSSARY
- Organic search is a method for entering one or several search terms as a single string of text into a search engine.
- Search Engine Marketing is promoting an organisation through search engines to meet its objectives by delivering relevant content in the search listings for searches and encourage them to click through to a destination site
- Pay Per Click (PPC) is a relevant text ad with a link to the company page and it is displayed on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP)
- Crawler (‘spider’) is a program used by search engines to collect data from the internet. When a crawler visits a website, it picks over the entire website’s content (i.e. the text) and stores it in a databank. It also stores all the external and internal links to the website.
- Keywords are the words and phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines.
EXAMPLES OF SEM
In the example above, the search term used was “gaming laptops” which produced 27 Product Listing Ads (PLAs). These ads are scrollable which potentially benefits a great number of retailers because of the gained visibility. Small – to mid size retailers can compete with bigger retailers who normally dominate the the space.
Second red box shows a PPC which was what we have discussed; a relevant text ad. A fee is charged for every click of each link, with the amount bid per click determining its position.
UNBELIEVABLE STATS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SEO
We all know Google owes the largest search engine market share. Aside from that, let me share with you some unbelievable facts about SEO that you need to know!
- 75% of users never click past the first page of search results
- The average time spent on a search session is only 1 minute long
- On Google, 18% of Organic clicks go to 1st result, 10% go to the second and 7 % go to the third
- 61% of all visits come from social media websites are from Facebook
SO HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE SEO FITNESS?
- Goals: Google Analytics allow one to set up goals For example, you can use a report and look at organic traffic and goals by landing page that means you are looking at the conversion from a an organic search to your site’s landing page.
- Keywords: How do you determine the keywords? You need to take into account few factors: relevance, search volume and competition. Keywords have to be relevant to your business prospects as you want your website to be in front of your targetted audience. You can start by using Google Adwords which can generate a list of relevant keywords.
- On page SEO: Your website have to ‘Speak Google’. In other words, it speaks the same language as its potential visitor base with keywords for SEO that help connect searchers to your site.
- Content Marketing: Although strategically placing these keywords are important, it is also essential that website has curated content and has high quality content for your readers. It has to be informative and valuable as a reader benefits from going to your site.
- Off Page SEO: For example, when you have valuable links pointing to your pages, search engines will assume that you’ve got great content – the type that provides value for users.
- Metrics: Google Analytics is a great tool especially in terms of metrics. Such metrics include engagement and user experience metrics.
I hope that’s not too much to take in! With all that is being said, I like to introduce another term: Analytics.
ANALYTICS.. WHAT IS IT?
Analytics consist of techniques that are used to assess and improve the contribution of e-marketing to a business, including reviewing traffic volume referrals, leads and sales
Chaffey & Chadwick, 2012
Designing for analytic techniques
A website can be break up into different parts and allow for analysis. For example, the call to action (buttons placement, size and color), headlines and amount of text on the page etc.
Analytics are useful as it provides business owners with directions to better improve the strategic layout of a website. For example, one useful tip I have learnt in the past was the color of the call to action button. If you are receiving low hits for your call to action button, there can be many reasons for it. One of which is you may wish to consider changing the color. It may not be prominent or purposeful enough; the color has to match with your company’s purpose. If it is an environmentally friendly company, you may consider using green instead of red. This may be a subtle change but can have a positive impact.
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS
The prevalence of social media in today’s society calls for more important metrics to be measured.
For example, let’s take a look at Instagram analytics:
With Instagram’s new Instagram insights, businesses and influencers now can view the number of profile clicks, reach for the account, website clicks and call clicks / email clicks.
This would be great for companies who use influencer marketing. They will be able to find a better influencer fit for their brands through the provision of analytics. Given the diversity of of the platform and its content, having multiple sources of Instagram insights on decks would greatly benefit the company.
Facebook analytics is different from Instagram as it provides a dashboard to track activity of the Facebook page. The similarity would be in terms of post reach and engagement.
So… what do you all think about? Which is more effective? SEO or PPC? Personally for me, SEO is more effective however PPC can be effective if it is for a shopping company. The use of scrollable ads is particularly effective because of its visual presentation which can help to enhance the attractiveness of the brand.
I like to hear your thoughts so do leave them in the comments below! Also, do let me know if they are other aspects of SEO I should have covered in this article! Thank you for reading till the end and I hope you have GREAT WEEK AHEAD!
Love,
Sandy
Welcome to My Lens of Digital Marketing 
Hi Sandy,
It feels great to be reading your blog post again. Its an insightful piece of information, especially for aspiring social media managers out there.
You have touched on the fundamental points for both SEO and PPC.
I like your point on laying out the statistics and figures to exemplify your points across, about the advantages of these tools.
I am already looking forward to your next sharing, thanks for the post!
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Hi Ayden! Thank you for your comment! Glad to hear that you have like the fundamental points on SEO! I understand that the information on SEO might not be sufficient; Some people take a course on SEO so definitely I won’t be able to cover everything in one blog! However, I do like to share one more interesting information I have recently learnt: Previously I have worked for a boss starting a travel company. His company was in operation for more than 10 years however, his website was not ranked high especially when you search key words like “Travel”, “Luxury” and ” Deals”. After doing an analysis for his website, I realised that his website was not SEO optimised. Keywords were not strategically included in his website, there was not PPC ad done for his website; nothing! This is definitely sad to know considering how his website was active for 10 years. The longer the website is active; it will definitely be able to rank higher on the SERP however keywords must also be included and optimised! I hope you find this information useful as well! thank you once again :’)
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Yet another fantastic content you’ve put up Sandy, keep up the great work! I believe both SEO and PPC have their good and bad sides to it. Personally, if i own a start-up, i would definitely love to get the attention of the netizens, hence i will leverage on SEO for that. Being the first few on the list when someone searches for the services that i provide, it will definitely capture their attention and of course, gain their trust unknowingly. Not saying that SEO is better than PPC. However, as a start-up, PPC might be a little too harsh on the expenses side, hence PPC will come in at a later part of the picture. But if i can afford PPC, why not? Do me no harm but only good! It would be most ideal if SEO and PPC can be used simultaneously in my personal opinion, the results will exceeds our expectations in a good way! Cheers!
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Hi Remus! Thank you for your comment! I am really glad that you have liked the content I have written! Yes I agree for companies who do not have the marketing budget to invest in SEM, optimisation of SEO is more than enough! I have done some research as to whether companies should invest in SEO or SEM. Companies should have continuous SEO strategy running in the background while SEM should be more of a “on-need” strategy. This should be an “on-demand” strategy to help the company boost the results when needed. SEO is considered as more of a slow strategy because it takes time for Google to revise the website, notice the improvements and act accordingly. It might take up to 6 months to really see the results of the efforts. So definitely both is needed and there should be a balance between the 2 strategies! Hope you will like my other articles as well :”)
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Oh Wow! these are great insights!
Never knew SEO and PPC are such powerful tools. Maybe I could apply the above knowledge when publishing my business online!
The analytic is pretty cool as well.
Have you by any chance applied the theory to real-life application yet? would love to hear from your experience
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Hi Wilson! Thank you for those kind words 🙂 Yes as we were talking about your business the other day you should definitely consider setting up a website and incorporate these marketing strategies! Yes I have helped my boss who runs a travel company to do an analysis of his website. From my experience, I used a website (free service) called”SEM Rush” to crawl the website for keywords and also to understand the list of key words that will be useful for a travel company. His website was not optimised for keywords (forgot what was the percentage generated) and he had to make changes to his website. I created a report of recommendations however, this can only be executed by the person who had access to the CMS. I hope my experience does provide you with a little insight! Thank you once again for reading my blog 🙂
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Interesting article Sandy! As I do run my own website for my business, SEO is the one I go to. I believe it helps generate organic traffic well. Most importantly, it can be done the way I want it to!
You’ve provided some helpful tips on SEO Fitness, and interesting little facts about SEO in general as well! A good read for sure! Maybe next time you should share about black/white had SEO!
Cheers
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Hi Bryan! Thank you for your kind comments 🙂 Yes agree that I should share more about black and white hat! What are your thoughts on black and white hat? Black hat, the meta stuffing of keywords is definitely unethical and this happens when the company do not have enough sufficient knowledge or education on SEO and know what works for them! Having read an article of yours which was about white hat, you have given an example on how SEO works for a particular website which I felt have given me a lot of insight! You have pointed out even the placement and the type of words for that website! Well-done 🙂 Thank you for your advice and I look forward to improving 🙂
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