If you take a moment to think about how often you use a search engine, it’s probably more than you realise. Searching, or ‘googling’ is second nature to most of us when it comes to discovering information and there’s not much that we can’t find out by putting a query into a search box. Everything from directions, restaurant opening times and even the height of celebrities are available for us to discover at the tip of our fingers.
Although there are many search engines available, Google dominates the search engine market with a huge 92% share of market share, which is why a lot of what we discuss in this article relates to that particular search engine.
What is SEO?
The results that appear in Google’s top 10 aren’t there by accident or luck; search engines use algorithms to define the best result for any particular search query, to make sure that they are providing the most relevant information. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) helps your website to align with those algorithms and be given a high position within the search results.
Put simply, SEO is the activity of optimising your website to increase how it ranks for certain queries that your customers are looking for on search engines. It helps to improve your discoverability online and be visible where and when your customers need you. At its core, SEO considers:
Website content – is the content on your website high quality? Does it relate to your business? Does it anticipate customer need? Most importantly, does it answer search queries?
Website performance – if a customer lands on your website will they have a positive experience or will they leave frustrated? Does it load quickly? Are there any technical issues that need to be fixed? And is it easy to navigate?
How your website and business is presented away from your own website – does the business have positive reviews, are there high-quality links to your website from other sites, are your business details on directories kept up to date?
Why does my business need SEO?
If your customers use search engines (they likely do), then it’s important you consider SEO as part of your digital strategy.
According to research conducted by Think With Google, 51% of shoppers head to Google to research a purchase they plan to make online and 59% use the search engine to research a purchase they plan to make in-store; so even if your business does not have e-commerce capabilities, it is important to have a presence on search engines so you can be found by potential customers.
Increased website traffic
As mentioned earlier; the results that are shown highly on google aren’t there by accident, and being on within the top results is important to ensure you have the opportunity to be visible to potential customers.
This tool from Advanced Web Ranking showcases the Click Through Rate (CTR) to websites from the search engine results page based on position. In May 2022, the click through rate for position 1 was 31%, this dramatically decreased for the lower positions with even CTR for position 10 being just 0.9%.
Without having a robust SEO strategy in place, it is unlikely that your website will be able to achieve the highest position and therefore the related clicks and traffic.
Great customer data
SEO teams have access to brilliant search data, and we have the skillset to make sense of that data. By understanding how your customer base searches, you can gain brilliant qualitative data that can be helpful in all aspects of your business, including:
How your customers search can be a great insight into the terminology they use and can help you when naming products or creating communications
When your customers search can help you to understand when they need certain products, which can be valuable in knowing when to communicate or when to release a new launch
Reduce reliance on paid campaigns
Whilst SEO itself isn’t free, unlike PPC (Pay Per Click) you do not have to pay for each click to your website. SEO is also ‘always on’ so you are visible to your customers when they need you, rather than just when you’re paying for the ad space.
Our SEO approach
At Logic+Magic, our SEO approach is unique to each of the businesses we work with, however it is always founded on our core principles:
Getting under the skin of your business and market
Assessing how your customers search using keyword data
Defining the current performance of your website with full technical and content audits
Using the above information to create a unique SEO strategy that is based on core search fundamentals
Monitor and measure, making changes and updates when needed
Get in touch
If you want to improve how your business performs on search engines, we’d love to work with you. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with with me directly by email, call us on 0330 551 9300 or head over to our SEO page to learn more.
Head of SEO
