digital marketing
By Carrie-ann | Jun 14, 2017 | Search Engine Optimisation

How to stay relevant in the market.

If you own a business, you have probably considered using search engine optimisation (SEO). Many businesses are already using SEO to increase their audience, raise awareness and promote sales; however, others are unsure whether this is a wise investment.

Search engine optimisation may seem to be a confusing subject, but it is actually quite simple. Here we look at why your business needs search engine optimisation to stay relevant in the market.

Why search engine optimisation is necessary
Imagine that your business sells pet food in Nottingham. Your website is filled with pictures of pet food and treats, and you assume that a search engine will be able to index your site using the images on the page; after all, anybody who looks at the page will know that you are a business that sells pet food in Nottingham.
Sadly, search engines do not have the same ability as humans; in fact, your page may appear totally blank to a search engine, meaning that it will rank your website so low down that it does not appear on the first few pages of Google. This means you could lose out on lots of potential customers.

This is why search engine optimisation is necessary. SEO makes your website easy for both search engines and people to understand, enabling you to reach a wider audience and increase sales. If you do not use SEO, it is possible that your website is invisible to new customers

The first page of Google search results
Most people only use the first page of Google. They rarely check pages with lower ranking websites; therefore, it is important to ensure that your website appears on the first page. There are normally about 10 results on the first page; the higher you are on the list, the more clicks you will get to your website.

Making sure your content gets seen
If you have no experience with SEO, you may want to consider hiring an SEO marketing specialist. They can help you to make your website search engine friendly and will even help you to determine the relevant keywords for your brand.

You can also learn more about SEO marketing so that you can optimise your own website. It is fairly easy to learn the basics, but you may want to take a course if you hope to learn more. This can be a great way to promote your brand, but it is a time-consuming task. It is also riskier than hiring someone who already has expert SEO knowledge.

The future of SEO
Search engine optimisation has been around for years and is constantly changing and evolving. It first began in the 1990s, when it was entirely focused on manual submission and keywords.
Today, companies also use external linking, links with anchor text, social media marketing and vertical search inclusion to optimise their websites. It is likely that SEO will continue to change and develop; therefore, SEO could be significantly different within the next five years.