What is SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, SEO is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility for relevant website searches. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.
Hiring a SEO specialist agency to help you optimize your website can be expensive but is money well spent. You can also chose to do the work yourself but it is important to know that SEO work is time consuming. It can often be better to hire someone to do the SEO work so that you can focus on other aspects of your business.
How does Seach Engine Optimization (SEO) work?
Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yandex use bots to crawl pages on the web, going from site to
site, collecting information about those pages and putting them in an index.
Next, algorithms analyze pages in the index, taking into account hundreds of
ranking factors or signals, to determine the order pages should appear in the
search results for a given query.
Search ranking factors can be considered proxies for aspects of the user
experience. Our seo services organizes the factors into six main categories and
weights each based on its overall importance to SEO. For example, content
quality and seo keyword optimization research are key factors of content
optimization, and crawlability and mobile-friendliness are important site
architecture factors.
The search algorithms are designed to surface relevant, authoritative pages and
provide users with an efficient search engine optimization strategy. Optimizing
your website and content with these factors in mind can help your pages rank
higher in the search results.
Unlike paid search ads,
you can’t pay search engines to get higher organic search rankings.
7 reasons why you need to invest in SEO:
1. Your customers rely on search engines
While it’s true that a significant amount of website traffic comes from sources like social media, the overwhelming majority comes from search engines. As a consumer yourself, it’s easy to understand this – when you have a question, you type it into a search engine. So do your customers.
2. SEO Increases Website Traffic
Dodwell Solutions’ website optimization strategy will substantially improve the number of high-quality visits to your website. This not only gives you a better chance of making a sale, it’s also an opportunity to collect an email address for your mailing list, or simply create familiarity with your brand.
3. SEO Generates More Sales
The more quality visitors your website receives the more leads and essentially sales you will generate. When you’re attracting traffic that’s actively looking for what you’re selling, this makes sense! If your website provides a more informative, engaging, and user-friendly experience than your competitors, there’s a good likelihood you’ll get the sale.
4. Sustainable Results
With SEO in Kenya, you are able to expect sustainable results that your company can rely on for the long term digital marketing and search engine optimization. Our SEO company focuses on continuous, ongoing growth and development – we’re interested in results that last, not quick fixes and shortcuts, hence we are the best seo agency in Kenya.
5. Your brand credibility will improve with SEO
Customers will love you, if Google loves you first! By ranking well in Google, customers are able to identify that you are leader in your industry. Also known as the ‘Halo Effect’, unpaid visibility in SERPs is a vote of confidence from search engines that your brand can be trusted – and that you know what you’re talking about!
6. SEO outperforms paid advertising
Your competitors might have a bigger budget to throw at paid ads, but buying customers is never sustainable in the long run. Search engine optimization completes your marketing in this fast growing digital space based on a research done by best seo agencies.
Attracting unpaid, organic traffic by virtue of having a well-optimized website is a genuine investment – because it continues to pay off in the long run.
7. SEO brings with it new opportunities
As new devices, smartphones and gadgets enter the market, people are starting to search for information and products in new ways. Voice, mobile and hyperlocal search are just some of these trends. If you’re the first among your competitors to adapt to these trends with our cutting-edge best search engine optimization services, you can leave them in the dust.
Why is SEO important for marketing?
SEO is a fundamental part of digital
marketing because people conduct millions of searches every year, often with commercial intent to find
information about products and services. Search is often the primary source of
digital traffic for brands and complements other marketing channels. Greater
visibility and ranking higher in search results than your competition can have
a material impact on your bottom line competitive advantage.
However, the search results have been evolving over the past few years to give users more direct answers and information that is
more likely to keep users on the results page instead of driving them to other
websites.
Also note, features like rich snippets
and Knowledge Panels
in the search results can increase visibility and provide users more
information about your company directly in the results.
Factors that Affect On-page and Off-page SEO Optimization
1. Content Marketing
Before we dive into some of the factors of on and off-page SEO, let’s talk about content. Content is effective in both attracting the search engines and helping your organization make connections with site visitors. SEO meaning can be emphasized even further through your visual and written content.
The more quality, relevant content pieces that you have on your website, the more likely search engines will be to rank your pages higher on the search engine results page.
Similarly, the more engaging and effective content you have on your website, the more likely your visitors will be to spend some quality time on your website and maybe even make a purchase.
The secret to creating content that is optimized for both the search engines and your human site visitors is to create a variety of different types of content pieces that are well-written and on topics that are most relevant to your audience.
Here are just a few types of content that you can focus on to help improve your content offering and, thus, your search engine rankings:
- Blog posts and articles
- Social media content
- E-books and whitepapers
- How-To Guides and Tutorials
- Videos and audio recordings
- Infographics or other visual content
Another important thing to consider when creating content for your website optimization is SEO keywords and phrases. These are relevant words and phrases that a search engine user might type in when looking for answers to their questions or relevant products and services.
When you create content around these keywords and phrases, you improve your chances of ranking higher for these keywords on the search engine results page.
Yet another factor that can impact your content, and thus your search engine ranking, is how fresh your content is. Freshness basically refers to how often your organization posts new content to your site.
However, creating brand new content is not the only way to keep your content fresh. You can also freshen up your content by updating posts, rewriting them to make them more effective, or adding new information and statistics over time.
Though creating content takes time and resources, it will more than pay off in the end. Search engines love great content and consumers need quality content to better understand the value your organization can provide.
Start off by creating a few blog posts and work to build a following on social media. Once you have a group of loyal fans and followers, your organization can work to create different types of media to attract and engage new leads.
2. On-Page SEO Optimization/on site SEO optimization
The on-page SEO factors are those elements that happen on your website. These are the things that you have complete control over, meaning that you can work to improve these factors over time by following best practices for SEO. This goes beyond just your content marketing to the deeper levels of your site’s HTML.
Here are just a few of the on-page SEO factors that can help you improve your search ranking:
- Title Tag – The title tag on each page tells the search engines what your page is about. This should be 70 characters or less, including both the keyword your content focuses on and your business name.
- Meta Description – The meta description on your website tells search engines a little bit more about what each page is about. This is also used by your human visitors to better understand what the page is about and if it’s relevant. This should include your keyword and also provide enough details to tell the reader what the content is about.
- Sub-headings – Not only do sub-headings make your content easier for visitors to read, but it can also help improve your SEO. You can use H1, H2, and H3 tags to help search engines better understand what your content is about.
- Internal Links – Building internal links, or hyperlinks to other content on your site, can help search engines learn more about your site. For example, if you are writing a post about the value of a specific product or service, you can link to the product or service page in your blog post.
- Image Name and ALT Tags – If you are using images on your website or within your blog content, you will also want to include your keyword or phrase in the image name and alt tag. By including this information, you also help give your SEO definition. This will help search engines better index your images, which may appear when users perform an image search for a certain keyword or phrase.
When strategically placing your SEO keywords and phrases on your pages, it’s important to avoid over-optimization. Google and other search engines will penalize your page if it attempts to use keywords too many times throughout the content.
In addition, you want to make sure that each piece of content focuses on just one or two keywords. This helps ensure that your content is specific and relevant. Trying to tackle too many keywords at once may negatively impact your search engine optimization as it often makes for un-focused and thin content.
While website content plays a vital role in your search engine rankings, it’s also important to consider your site architecture. Part of the optimization process is to ensure SEO definition on all parts of your web pages. You want to use a website design that makes it easy for search engines to scan or crawl your pages and content.
Building internal links between your pages, creating a sitemap and submitting your sitemap to search engines can both help improve your site’s crawlability and give your search engines a better understanding of your content.
Yet another concern when it comes to your site’s architecture is whether or not your website is mobile-friendly. Many consumers are searching for information and brands on their mobile devices.
You need to make sure that these users are able to view, read, and navigate your website from their mobile device. Not only does this impact the user experience, but it can also affect your SEO optimization.
3. Off-Page SEO Optimization
In addition to the on-page SEO elements that your organization has control over, there are also off-page SEO factors that can impact your ranking. Though you do not have direct control over these off-page factors, there are ways that you can improve your chances of having these factors work out in your favor. Here are a few of the different off-page SEO factors that can impact your search engine rankings:
- Trust – Trust is becoming an increasingly important factor in a site’s Google ranking. This is how Google determines whether you have a legitimate site that visitors can trust. One of the best ways to improve trust is by building quality backlinks from sites that have authority.
- Links – One of the most popular ways to build off-page SEO is through backlinks. You want to be careful here as spamming sites with your links is a quick and easy way to get your site banned from the search engines. Instead, take the time to build relationships with influencers and fans who create quality content and will link back to your site in their own content.
- Social – Another important off-page SEO factor are social signals, such as likes and shares. When it comes to boosting SEO, you want to look for quality shares from influencers. The more quality content you publish, the more likely you will be to get people to share your content with others.
Though you do not have direct control over what happens outside of your organization, you can increase your chances of improving off-page SEO simply by creating quality content that others will find valuable.
By giving your SEO meaning, you can catch the attention of more search engine users. The more relevant and interesting your content is, the more likely others will be to link to your content and share it on social media. The more people trust your content, the more the search engines will as well.
Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO Definition
We’ve discussed SEO and how it works, so let’s break it down even further. When it comes to SEO, there are two different approaches that organizations take to optimizing their sites for the search engines – black hat vs. white hat SEO.
Some organizations are only interested in SEO so that they can rank their content quickly and make some money in the short-term. Black hat SEO involves tactics that focus on optimizing content only for the search engines.
This means that organizations are not considering the human visitors that will read and navigate their site content. These organizations will bend or break the rules in order to improve their site rankings to make a quick buck.
In the end, this approach to SEO produces pages that are often difficult for people to read and look a whole lot like spam. Though the sites may rank more quickly than those that are optimized properly, these sites are often penalized or banned by search engines rather quickly.
Overall, this get-rich-quick approach to SEO ruins the organization’s chance of building a website that is sustainable and able to bring in new leads for years to come.
On the other hand, white hat SEO is an effective approach to optimizing your website for search engines and building a sustainable business online. This approach to search engine optimization involves focusing on the human audience that will be clicking on and reading the site’s content. By giving your website SEO definition, you ensure that your digital content is easy to find and view.
The goal of this type of search engine optimization is to produce the best content possible on a site that’s easy to read and navigate while also following the search engine’s rules for optimization.
It’s important to note that though black hat SEO tactics might help you rank quickly, it is inevitable that the search engines will eventually figure out what you are doing and penalize your site.
Depending on the severity of the offense, your site may not be able to come back from the penalties. The only way to build a sustainable online business that will bring in more organic traffic over time is to follow SEO marketing best practices and create effective content that your visitors will find valuable.
Why Dodwell Solutions?
Dodwell Solutions Limited is the best seo marketing company in Kenya with a proven track record, having achieved success in Kenya and other highly competitive markets across East Africa, more than 4 different countries worldwide including Germany. Dodwell Solutions has been able to take that search engine optimization knowledge and apply it to the local niches and businesses with outstanding results.
Do you want us to help you reach the world contact us on marketing@dodwellsolutions.com
