What is SEO and how it works
If you find yourself asking this question then you have probably had your head in sand for the last five years. As a business owner it is vital to understand what the competition are using to grow their business which means asking what is SEO and how it works at this point in time means you have missed a large amount of business already.
With the digital age’s rapid growth over the last five years and SEO being in the news with all the Google changes named after animals affecting SEO such as Panda, Penguin, Pigeon, etc it has been hard not to notice things. If you have missed it then finding this article today is vital to move your business forward. How do you think you found this article in the first place? – as a result of SEO.
Understanding what is SEO and how it works is something that is going to change your business and lets start by looking why the Internet is important to a business. In 2008 we spend 0.3 hours a day on a mobile device using the Internet digital media in someway and this has grown in 2015 to be 2.8 hours a day. In 2016 this growth continued and this year (2017) will see an even larger growth.
The information above from KPCB shows an 11% growth and this is going to continue growing in popularity as we see the use of Smart TV’s and Smart Watches providing us with even more ways to connect to customers.
Our world is changing to be a constantly connected digital world with consumers using the Internet for decisions and becoming reliant on smartphones more than ever for shopping or looking for products and services.
We trust Google and over the last five years Google has grown even further providing more products and services used in daily life. Google carried out a study with Nielsen in 2013 to understand consumers’ mobile habits in the shopping process. This research over three years ago now showed how consumers use mobiles to research a product to the actual purchase of the product.
Download the survey here.
This survey uncovered five key important findings, consumers are spending time researching on their smartphones which showed a usage of 15+ hours a week and remember this was report was in 2013.
The research showed that consumers start the buying process for products or services with a search engine over an app. With the most used search engine being Google this means if you are not using the power of the Internet via SEO for your business your business is not going to be included in the consumer decision path for products or services.
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO plays a vital part of this process, getting everything right on your website in-order to make Google able to find the content and understand it, then to trust it as an authority to add value to the user experience of Google search results.
An SEO company also has the tools to help to understand what keywords to target for organic search listing within Google search results that people are using and identify keywords that convert highly.
The survey also showed that the proximity is important with 69% of people expecting businesses to be within a five mile radius of their physical location. It is clear that immediacy is key and more than half want to purchase a product or service within the hour. In 2016 more and more changes took place in the way that delivery takes place with companies offering same day delivery and a huge growth of click and collect services. It was stated that 95% of online shoppers will now use a click and collect service for their Christmas shopping and the likes of Argos rated as the retailer offering the best click and collect user experience has stated that in 2014, 31% of it total online sales used click and collect. This has since grown further and also the huge growth of the popularity of Black Friday and Cyber Monday means that retailers had to change processes with some retailers like NEXT having issues and even large corporate business’s website’s going down due to too many visitors.
Argos has been one of the companies to follow when it comes to the Click and Collect service and they have seen a continued growth over 2015 and when the Internet Retailing Report created “Winning the Retail Battle in 2015” it was stated that around 60% of the retailers canvassed offered the service with many others planning to launch a click and collect service in 2016.
To add to this new change in shopping you will have seen over the last few years drive-through pick-up sites appearing and locker sites in carefully selected locations, all developed due to the inconvenience of home delivery and the growth of the Internet meaning we are not physically there when making a large amount of the purchases in our life.
Offices and workplaces have also become popular delivery locations with this change in consumer behaviour and all this change is due to the Internet success. Going back to the Google study, Mobile influences purchase decisions with around 93% going on to buy.
It is clear that in 2017 the Internet is vital for every business and this means that SEO is now even more important than ever before.
SEO Google
If you want to appear in Google search results then SEO plays a vital part of this process. To fully understand this you need to understand “How does Google Search work?“.
Matt Cutts from Google explains the process Google follows and this shows the complex task that Google use. Another video from Matt explains “How Search Works” and this is vital to understand:-
If you watched the videos and understand how Google gets your website data and what to do with it you will start to better understand the role of SEO. An SEO consultant we look at what SEO Google needs to find and this changes as Google improves the algorithm.
An SEO Consultant will ensure that whatever the product or service is that your business is involved with, Google will find the exact information you need them to find so that they can index this data to be part of the search engine results pages. The more relevant and the more trusted the higher the position in the search results which means that to achieve number one you have to do a lot things perfect and do it better than your competition.
SEO Company
Chameleon Web Services is an SEO company with consultants that have been working with Internet marketing since 2001 and we have seen so many changes. We have grown with these changes and developed with them improving and becoming stronger year on year.
Take our own Industry sector which should be the toughest really being as we are trying to beat SEO professionals for a handle full of keywords, an SEO company should be able to appear on page one if they are any good. And importantly you need to take notice of the paid Google adverts. If an SEO company is paying on average £15 to £30 per click to Google for Adwords to be on page one of search results you would think that they should be trying to achieve an organic listing to be listed for FREE. If they cannot do this how are they going to achieve success for your business!…
This was a screen shot taken today (14/01/2017. Google it for yourself to check the results and you will see we have two listings in search results for “Birmingham SEO Services” which means we have over achieved here in one of the most difficult sectors.
