How SEO affects your business?

If you're a business, there are some very real and specific benefits to having a consistent, ongoing search engine optimization strategy.

Users leading SEO:

For the first time in the history of marketing, users are offering up their actual intent through the words that they type and speak into search engines.

And more than ever before, you can measure the results of your SEO efforts as a marketing channel.

SEO Free or Paid?

While search engines don't charge you for listing your web pages, planning and implementing SEO in your organization is certainly not free.

You'll need to spend the time, the money, and the resources to do this the right way.

The good news is that this can help you reach a tremendously large audience, attract more targeted visitors, and measure the impact of your efforts in terms of a return on your investment.

More and more content appears on the web every second of every day. And your customers need search engines to help make sense of it all.

Why SEO good for people?

People search to find answers to their questions, to buy products, to find a place to eat, to book travel, to get news. Just about everything we do online starts with a search. We call the motivation behind a given search intent. And it's not just done around the family PC anymore. The explosion of connected mobile devices and voice assistants means that we have access to search just about anywhere in the world with just a few keystrokes or voice commands. 

What people search for and the words they choose when making their query says a lot about their intent, or what actions they want to take at a specific moment in time. And this has traditionally been the Holy Grail of marketing research.

If somebody searches for Diving in Dahab or where to buy a digital camera, it's very easy, as a marketer, to understand what they're looking for. The role of search engines is to match those user search queries to pages that match that topic. And if you sell cameras, well, what that means to you is that you can create relevant content that meets the needs of the searcher at exactly the right moment.

Good SEO can essentially provide you a stream of some of the most targeted, intent-driven traffic that you could possibly ask for. But more than that, one of the biggest benefits of search engine optimization is the ability to actually measure your results. You can use your website analytics data to find out exactly how successful you are in acquiring search engine users. And you can see if those users' actions are in line with your business goals.

 

Evaluate your business:

You can evaluate the effectiveness of your content in attracting and advancing the user through your sales file. And you can measure what they do and what they don't do on your website and beyond. By attaching real dollars and cents to those actions that began with a simple search, you'll be able to truly measure return on investment from your SEO channel.

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Research the SERPs

The search engine results pages or SERPS are the proving ground for a successful keyword strategy. 

It is estimated that the number one website in the results will get a 35% share of clicks. This also shows you important areas to consider in your optimization and content tactics. 

Many times it's not just a webpage that you need to optimize for rankings. It can be a product page, a file, a video, or a podcast. Most times you might be up against local results, which takes up a lot of real estate on the page. 

Other times your competition may be Google itself. One of my keywords from my seed list produces a result that looks like this. This is called the knowledge graph. The search engine will attempt to answer your query with content from another source, and present it on the search results page. 

Now, there are two sides to this. For the search engine, especially Google, it gives answers to the searcher immediately. And without clicking the result, the searcher sees the information they need. 

For the site owner, it's a bit more complex. You see, Google can answer the searcher's question without the searcher ever going to my website. So while my content may have answered the searcher's question, I probably didn't get a visit and will have no way of knowing how many people saw. Plus, I didn't get a chance to present my content to the searcher in the context of my website. 

Next, I want to make note of any results that have ads on the page. When businesses are actively bidding on a term that provides ads, it shows you that there is significant competition for that term. 

Additionally, because most searchers are using a mobile device, the first ad will take up most of the screen. They will have to scroll through the ads to get to the organic results, the ones based on the search engine's algorithm. As you can see in this example, my keyword, Dubai visit, has a results page with four ads at the top of the page, and then the organic results. 

This is critical. If someone's on a smartphone, 

they're not going to see my organic result. They're going to see the ads. So make a note in your keyword list of which of your terms results in ads, and which do not. Highlight those that have ads or the Google knowledge graph, as you may have to change tactics in order to gain visibility.

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Keywords provide context

I travel a lot for business, and search results keep me connected. Many times all I have to do is search for seafood restaurant and I'll immediately see restaurants that are nearby, with ratings, recommendations, maps, pictures, and menus. It makes travel easier when you have all of this information at your fingertips. 

Now, from a business standpoint, it also shows the competition you might have. Since making a seed list, now you check the results to see what shows up for your keywords. It's not the same for everybody. In fact, it could be different for every business, industry, or keyword. A local dry cleaning business, a laser printer, how to tie a tie, how much does an elephant weigh? All of these searches produce very different types of results. 

The search engine results page, or SERP, is your primary focus for rankings. If you're a local business, you'll see local results, listings, pictures, and maps. If you're selling products, you'll see product listings. If someone searches for how to do something, they'll see videos. Or informational searches can show entirely different mixed results. 

As you can see, the results change based on the type of search. This has to be taken into account 

as part of your keyword optimization and marketing plan. It's not just about getting rankings anymore. It's about the visibility in the search results through whatever media may be shown. In this result for hiking in California, I have to compete with the map of California on the right, and other travel companies and destinations offering travel packages. 

If the searcher is using their smartphone, I have to compete in a smaller space that heavily favors the top of the page. That now has to be part of my strategy. So take your seed list and do searches at different destinations. Google, Bing for search. Maybe Amazon or eBay if you compete there as well. 

Take notes of how different words and phrases will change the results. For this, I create a spreadsheet and list the key words I used to search. Then I create columns to note the information that appears on the search results page, knowledge graphs, product listings, maps, images, videos, or ads, anything beyond the typical search results page. 

Then make notes of how you will need to optimize your content and any multimedia or page search campaigns you may need to implement in order to compete and have visibility on the results page.

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Keywords research shows intent

If you are getting ready to buy a car, simply search for the word car, I'm not telling you much. 

It's a very general term and it could mean thousands of things. You don't know if I'm interested in new or used, buying or leasing, and even the search results are all over the place. 

This is why looking at individual words or very general words can be deceiving. While the word cars are searched on the most of any word in the car category, it offers very little in terms of relevance. 

We honestly don't know what the searcher means with this single-word search. 

• It could be a BMW. 
• It could be a local dealer. 
• It could be a kid looking for a poster for their room. 

The only way to get intent is to look for more words, so when someone searches for low-mileage used BMW in Springfield, now we get the intent. We get the where, what, and the brand, and know that we can work with. The more words used in a search phrase, the more intent that it communicates. 

When you know the intent, you can use those words to optimize, label, and integrate into your content. It starts by making a seed list of search terms. A seed list is oh, about 10 to 15 words or phrases that describe your business. 

Let's use the example site of explore Sant Catreen, and I'm going to start my seed list simply by describing the tours, products, and services that they offer. It's mainly hiking, backpacking, and nature tours. Think about these words from the standpoint of the searcher. 

What are they looking for? Then look at your list and see how the searches progress from simple to lengthy. 

• The progression shows us how searchers may modify or adapt their search and refine their terms to get the results they need. 
• The progression will also show you the stages of a searcher's thinking. 
• Start by asking, what non-branded searches 
• bring people to my site? 
• Then, do those searches lead to other searches? 

In my list, I'm starting with a general search, Sant Catreen, and it can lead to many other detailed searches. 

Now I call this the Disney effect. You see, people start by searching for a Disney vacation and that leads to searches about flights, hotels, restaurants, what to do, what to see, what's nearby, and other recommendations. 

One search triggers dozens of other searches throughout the life cycle of that search phrase. 

In this way, work through the needs of your prospect. 

• What need triggers their initial search? 
• Is your product that search or is it the result of other searches? 
• Are there other triggers that start their progression and how they work their way to your product? 

Here's your assignment. Come up with a seed list of 15 to 20 non-branded keywords that you think people use to find your website. This is based on their need. How would people find you?

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What is search engine optimization (SEO)?

What is search engine optimization (SEO)?

Search engine optimization is the process of making improvements on and off your website in order to gain more exposure in search engine results. And more exposure in search engine results will ultimately lead to more visitors finding you for the right reasons.

In order to understand what improvements will affect search engine results, let's take a step back and understand the goal of the search engines themselves. At the heart of it all, search engines are just trying to find and understand all the content out there on the internet, and then quickly deliver relevant and authoritative results based on any phrase the user might be searching for.

First, let's talk about relevance. 

When a user searches for something like Cairo hotels, search engines want to show a list of results that are relevant to the topic of Cairo hotels.

Search engines will analyze all of the webpages they have ever visited, and pick out the pages that they believe are the most relevant to Cairo hotels. They determine this by evaluating lots of different factors, including how your content is written and implemented in code, as well as how other websites around the internet are linking to you. And all of this is stuffed into a very big, very complex, and very proprietary index.

At the end of the day, and in a fraction of a second, the search engine is then able to use complex algorithms to rank and display all of those webpages in order of relevance to that phrase that the user just typed in, California hotels.

This is very important to understand, because search engines make a very clear distinction between content that's about Cairo hotels versus content relevant for other phrases, like Cairo resorts, or a phrase like swimming pool.

Search engines are able to understand quite a bit about semantic and thematic connections between words and concepts.

Take another example search query, dog crates. A search engine knows that pages selling dog crates are extremely relevant to that search query. But it also knows that websites about pet carriers are very relevant, too. And it knows that a website promoting things like pet food or dog toys might also be relevant to the search query, but perhaps to a lesser extent.

The other factor that influences search engine exposure is authority.

In other words, out there on the largely lawless World Wide Web, where anyone can post anything, is your website a trusted place on the internet that the search engines would want to show to their users? One very common way that search engines determine the authority of a webpage or a domain is by evaluating what other websites link to you, and this can be measured through not only links out there that are pointing to your website, but also, and this is especially important if you're a local business or selling a product, reviews and what people are saying about you on the internet, a category collectively referred to as sentiment.

You can think of links as a vote on the internet. A webpage linking to your website is almost like saying, hey, I trust your content enough that I'm willing to reference your page and possibly even send my traffic to your site. It's a vote of trust, and the search engines pick up on this as they scour the web, reading, evaluating, and storing all the data they can find on all the pages of the internet. But it's important to know right from the start that this is not just a popularity contest where you try to accumulate the most votes or links on the internet.

Search engines have safeguards in place to prevent this kind of abuse, and instead place an emphasis on the quality and relevance of a link. For example, a search engine is more likely to trust a link if it comes from a well-respected or industry-related site, like an industry-leading blog or a non-profit or a government agency involved in your field of work.

If you were the owner of that Cairo hotel, you may have links from travel review sites, local chambers of commerce, or things like local travel bureaus. All that is pretty relevant. A link coming from a one month old site that has nothing to do with you or your industry right above some text that says I'll link to anything you want for $5 is not going to be valued nearly as much.

In fact, that could get your site tossed from the results pages altogether. From the search engine's perspective, some links are more effective than others in casting their vote to your website and determining your site's authority. So you might think of this whole system as a weighted democracy, where some votes are worth more than others.

Understanding how important both relevance and authority are to a search engine will help us to both understand and improve these factors, and will ultimately lead to better search engine exposure and more visitors to the pages of our websites.

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