What is SEO and its importance for businesses

What is SEO?

SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. This is a process aimed at improving website rankings and helping users easily find a website in search engine results.

Definition of SEO

With a good strategy, a business’ website can have a high ranking when users search for keywords on search engines. This will improve the quality and traffic of the website.

How SEO works

Search engines use bots to gather data from web pages and create an index. The index is a library where Google stores data, and users can find accurate and quick information.

How SEO works

Each search engine employs different algorithms to provide the best search results for users. A website that wants to have a high ranking on search engines needs to consider various factors. With an SEO strategy, user experience remains crucial. This is also how search engines verify the quality of a website

What benefits does SEO bring to businesses?

SEO brings several benefits to businesses. An effective campaign helps a business website achieve high rankings, which means more potential customers, higher conversion rates, and increased brand recognition.

Attract customers and sustain growth

Implementing effective SEO helps the website rank at the top of search results and attract more traffic. This result can be maintained for a long time because the website has been optimized and recognized by Google as a high-quality website.

Increase Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI stands for Return On Investment, which is the ratio of profit earned and investment cost. A high ROI indicates that the business is operating effectively. SEO helps businesses:

• Increase conversion rates and improve revenue
• Estimate the profitability from the traffic generated
• Analyze and evaluate the website’s performance to address issues that affect revenue

With the effectiveness of SEO, businesses can save costs on advertising campaigns.

Increase ROI with SEO

Long-Term Investment

Investing in an SEO campaign brings long-term results for businesses. Once effectively optimized, the website will maintain its top position for an extended period. This brings in free organic traffic and attracts more potential customers without the need for extensive marketing efforts.

Customer Navigation Ability

A website is an owned media, a communication channel owned by the business. Therefore, businesses can easily guide customers on the website to new campaigns and content through internal links, banners, etc. without additional costs.

Websites with quality and engaging content will attract attention from online newspapers, social media users, and other media outlets. As a result, the business gains earned media, which increases credibility compared to relying solely on owned media.

Optimization of User Interface and User Experience (UI/UX)

Optimizing UI/UX is an essential part of an SEO strategy as it helps enhance the customer experience on the website. Additionally, user experience is a ranking factor of Google. As a result, the website will have a high ranking on search engine results.

Doing good SEO helps to optimize user UX/UI

Understanding Potential Customer Behavior

When implementing a campaign, businesses need to thoroughly research user behavior. Conducting research through tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console helps businesses understand who their potential customers are and what they want. With this understanding, businesses can improve their communication strategies and increase conversion rates.

Support for Remarketing

With the potential customers gained through SEO, businesses can build more suitable remarketing strategies. This helps optimize advertising costs and achieve better conversion rates.

SEO supports the implementation of Remarketing campaign

Building a Sustainable Brand

Users continuously search for related keywords until they find the information they need. If a business website consistently appears at the top of search results, users will perceive it as an expert in the field they are looking for. The higher the website’s ranking, the higher the credibility and development sustainability of the business brand.

Performing SEO helps to increase brand awareness and thrive

Factors affecting effectiveness of SEO

The factors that influence the effectiveness of SEO are as follows:

Deployment Time

A campaign requires a significant amount of time. It can take several months for a web page to reach the top of search engine results. Therefore, businesses need to be patient.

Competitors

Due to its many benefits, many businesses have started implementing SEO, which leads to high competition. A successful campaign by one business will attract the attention of competitors. They may change their strategies and target the website of the successful business.

High competition with competitors in SEO

Other Supporting Factors

While SEO helps improve website conversion rates, it is essential to avoid focusing solely on it. Creating a good conversion rate depends on other supporting factors such as:

• UX & UI of the website
• Content quality of the website
• Remarketing plan
• CRM system to convert potential into actual customers

To achieve customer conversion, two parallel plans need to be developed:

• A plan to attract users based on their customer profiles through channels like SEO, Ads, etc.
• A plan to optimize the conversion of potential customers into actual customers and generate revenue.

Google Algorithm Changes

Implementing SEO for websites primarily relies on Google’s algorithms to increase rankings. If the algorithms change, the website’s rankings will automatically change as well.

Google constantly updates its algorithms to remove low-quality websites from search results. Its goal is to provide the best results possible to users, so website optimization should focus on user experience.

SEO is influenced by Google’s algorithm

The most popular type of SEO today

Below are the common types of SEO that are popular nowadays:

Comprehensive SEO

Comprehensive SEO involves optimizing the entire website to increase its visibility. The goal is to rank high for keywords related to the business’s products, services, and customer interests.

What is comprehensive SEO?

Keyword SEO

This process involves optimizing the website based on target keywords according to search engine standards. The objective is to rank these keywords at the top of search results.

Optimizing keywords to help the website get the top position

Traffic SEO

Traffic SEO ensures that the website receives traffic from the business’ intended audience. Businesses can generate traffiic from the following sources:

• Direct (direct visits)
• Referral (indirect visits)
• Organic Search (natural search on search engines)

Increase traffic thanks to SEO

App SEO

App SEO focuses on optimizing applications to rank highly in search results so that users can find and install them. It is also applied on platforms like App Store and Google Play.

Branding SEO

This type aims to increase brand recognition and entity. Consequently, it helps improve the brand’s ranking in search results. A strong website with high trust from customers leads to increased business effectiveness, especially for newly established companies.

Sales SEO

Sales SEO is widely used, particularly on e-commerce websites. With the increasing demand for direct online shopping, optimizing products for the top search results is becoming more popular.

This type of SEO helps businesses naturally reach customers by providing information about products when customers search for related keywords. If the information provided is high-quality and relevant to customer needs, they are more likely to become loyal customers.

Crisis SEO

Crisis SEO refers to situations where a website experiences sudden loss of stability and search results rankings. This may result in revenue loss and negative impacts on the website owner. The consequences are even worse if it is not rectified quickly and properly.

SEO crisis lead to websites losing rankings

It is crucial to identify the causes of the SEO crisis such as:

• Competitors attaching dirty backlinks
• Excessive link building strategy
• Uninspired or duplicate content
• Using Black Hat SEO

To handle the SEO crisis, follow the following process:

• Identify the cause of the SEO crisis
• Filter dirty backlinks and disavow those links
• Fix serious content errors
• Re-optimize your website to be Google-friendly
• Report to Google for quick processing
• Handle crises alongside building and developing new pages to maximize time and benefits.

SEO Trends

SEO Trends can be divided into two categories: ongoing trends and upcoming trends:

• Ongoing trends focus on SEO methods related to current events, programs, or popular figures on various media channels.
• Upcoming trends involve anticipating future events through related keywords.

This type often has high competition and can increase website traffic for a limited period of time.

What are SEO Trends?

What should be considered when SEO a website?

To bring a website to the top of search results, many factors need to work in conjunction. Here are some important considerations when performing website SEO:

Optimize Google’s data collection capabilities

First, the website needs to be well-optimized so that Google’s bots can collect data more easily. If the website obstructs the data collection process of Google, the website will not be indexed and ranked.

You can use internal links to help Google find and index new websites more quickly. If you cannot optimize it yourself, seek help from programming experts or website administrators to perform these tasks.

Keyword research

Keyword research is an important process of an SEO strategy. Through keywords, users will find the website on search engines. This research process will help identify the appropriate keywords to optimize and support the content strategy.

The keyword research process helps to build the right set of keywords

This is a highly serious and time-consuming task. If keyword research is not done properly, it will consume a lot of the project’s budget but yield no results.

Building SEO-optimized content

In addition to being quality and useful for users, your content also needs to be standardized for SEO to help search engines quickly rank the website. SEO-optimized content needs to meet the requirements of title tags, description tags, reasonable keyword density, optimized images, etc. However, quality content is still a priority in the early stages of implementing an SEO campaign.

Standard SEO articles make it easier for search engines to rank

Optimizing website structure

The structure of the website is how the website pages are arranged and linked together. Optimizing it helps search engines search and collect data quickly and helps users find information more seamlessly.

On-page Optimization

On-page optimization refers to the elements directly on the website. The goal of this is to rank the website high in search results and attract more traffic.

This aspect of SEO includes technical and content-related factors of the website. This is a task that needs to be done regularly, especially for newly built websites.

 

On-Page SEO Optimization

Off-page Optimization

These are the optimization tasks outside the website, including building high-quality backlinks and marketing on social media and social bookmarking. The goal of off-page optimization is also to help the website rank higher on search results and attract more traffic.

It is a time-consuming task, especially link building. This is because Google is particularly interested in the quantity and quality of backlinks. If they are of poor quality, the website is at risk of being penalized by Google.

Optimizing for Mobile Devices

Currently, the use of mobile devices such as phones and tablets to search for information is increasing. Therefore, the website needs to be optimized for mobile devices to be more user-friendly.

Currently, Google has made the switch to mobile-first indexing. Therefore, the website must be mobile-friendly to be indexed faster. Here are ways to optimize the website for mobile devices:

• Create 2 different interfaces for desktop and mobile, but use the same URL
• Use 2 different URLs for the desktop and mobile device versions
• The interface can be stretched to both desktop and mobile interfaces.

Optimizing User Experience

Optimizing the user experience will help the website create a positive impression with customers. A website with slow loading times or content with ill-fitted size and font will create an unpleasant feeling for users.

These factors can lead to a decrease in time spent on the website and increase in bounce rate. Moreover, page loading speed is also an important factor for Google to evaluate and rank the website.

User experience needs to be emphasized

SEO Analysis and Measurement of Effectiveness

This is an activity that needs to be done after a period of implementing the SEO campaign. Analyzing and evaluating the activities done will help measure the effectiveness of SEO.

SEO campaigns always need to be analyzed and measured for effectiveness

There are many tools to support analysis and measurement of SEO effectiveness. Two in-depth analysis tools from Google are Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

With Google Analytics, you can analyze and understand user behavior. As for Google Search Console, it will notify you of website errors and fix them, therefore improving website performance.

Effective SEO Support Tools

Below are some popular tools used to support effective SEO implementation:

On-page optimization support

For businesses investing heavily in SEO, they often use on-page support tools such as SEMRush and MozPro. These are two platforms that help optimize websites, provide information, and check keyword rankings on the website.

Using link analysis

With link analysis tools, you can check the quality of backlinks and which links bring more traffic to the website. There are two effective link analysis tools for you to choose from: Ahrefs and Open Site Explorer.

Tools that help analyze, check, and optimize links

Content creation support

Content creation support tools will help you quickly and easily perform tasks such as generating ideas and ensuring content quality, grammar, and spelling. You can refer to tools such as Grammarly, SEO Surfer, and SEMrush.

Improving UX/UI

UX/UI is the term for website interfaces related to the user experience. A website with optimized UX/UI will help users easily navigate and find information, increasing time spent on the page and ranking in search results. Tools to improve UX/UI include Crazyegg, Google Analytics, etc.

Keyword Analysis

Keyword research is an important task. Therefore, using keyword analysis tools will help make the research process more accurate.

Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and Keywordtool.io are the three most commonly used keyword analysis tools today. These tools will help build a quality keyword set, allowing the website to reach more customers.

Website Analysis/Audit

Website analysis helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of the website. With the support of audit tools, you will receive more accurate analysis results. Moreover, you can check your competitor’s website to learn from their strengths. Credible tools that you can refer to include Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, Website Auditor,….

Audit tools help identify the strengths and weaknesses of the website

Keyword Ranking Check

These tools will help you check keyword rankings faster and more accurately than doing it manually. Also, this tool will show the changes of keywords to help you optimize better. Two tools that you can try are Rank Tracker and Serprobot.

Necessary Skills for Doing SEO

Certain skills are required to do SEO. Here are some essential skills to become a professional:

Analysis and critical thinking

In addition to optimizing websites, tasks like analyzing data, competitor analysis, and understanding Google’s algorithms are very time-consuming. During a campaign, you may encounter issues such as pages not ranking, websites being penalized by Google, or competitor attacks. To identify these issues, you need analytical and critical thinking skills to come up with a reasonable solution.

Technical mindset

SEO is a branch of marketing, but it involves a lot of technical work. Therefore, you need to have a technical mindset and work well with numbers to perform optimization effectively. You can learn this skill by participating in projects, reading books, or taking courses.

Computer skills

SEO work involves a lot of website data. Computer skills proficiency, especially Excel, will help you easily and scientifically organize, sort, and store data. This is a great advantage for becoming an SEO professional.

Programming

All information on a website is stored in code. Therefore, if you have basic programming knowledge like the ability to read and understand codes, it will help you a lot during the process.

Updating the Latest SEO Trends

Keeping up with the latest trends can give you an advantage in competing with other businesses. Here are some SEO trends you need to know.

Content Hub and Entity Building Trends

Content Hub: a pyramid model consisting of Hero, Hub, and Hygiene Content. The model is more concise than AIDA, making it easier to have an overview and implement campaigns.

The Hub is the central content in this pyramid model. Other content must ensure that users transition to Hub Content. This will help retain customers and ensure they come back.

Entity Building means building the ability to recognize and distinguish brands. Entities help Google recognize a website’s brand as unique, increase trust, and drive development. From there, the website also increases rankings on search engines.

Google Passage Ranking Trend

To provide accurate results when users search for information, Google has found answers in the content sections of the page. This is Google Passage. Google will rank content sections on pages. Understanding it will help increase the chances of getting high rankings on search engines.

Core Web Vitals Ranking Trend

Core Web Vitals are factors that Google highly values and are important to user experience on the website. The three user measurements that evaluate Core Web Vitals are: Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.

Core Web Vital will affect website rankings, so you need to focus on it to provide a better user experience.

Visual Search Trend

Visual Search allows you to search with images. According to recent statistics, Google Lens has over 1 billion uses, and Pinterest has over 600 million Visual Searches per month. This shows that Visual Search is a growing SEO trend.

Frequently Asked Questions about SEO

Does SEO have a lot to do with IT?

SEO is not heavily related to IT. However, you need to have a basic understanding of IT knowledge to implement techniques more easily and make technical suggestions to improve the website.

Do I need to know how to write to do SEO?

An SEO employee not only needs technical skills but also writing skills. You need to develop ideas, build outlines, and write complete articles to create a standard article. Quality content will be the deciding factor in whether users stay on the website or not.

Do I need to know design to do SEO?

SEO does not require extensive design knowledge, but you should know how to analyze and provide feedback on websites’ interface. The interface of the websites is also important and has a significant impact on website rankings on search engines.

Which SEO method is the most effective?

All methods will complement each other. Therefore, you need to coordinate all of them to create good results and bring many benefits to the business.

How long does it take to get results from SEO?

A campaign requires a lot of time to invest and will start to yield results within about 6 months. Therefore, to truly achieve the desired results, it will take from 6 months to 12 months.

Should I implement SEO or run ads?

You should not focus solely on one thing. You need to implement SEO and run ads in tandem to create good results for the campaign. In addition, SEO will help optimize the quality of the website and positively impact the quality of advertising.

Learn more: What is an SEO agency and how can you enlist their help for your SEO efforts?

Final thoughts

This article has clarified what is SEO as well as the benefits that it brings to businesses. To venture into this digital marketing sector, you will need thorough and careful preparation as well as support from a professional SEO digital marketing company.

Do not hesitate to contact On Digitals should you have any question regarding SEO services implementation from an SEO agency Vietnam.