Determine the origin of traffic.

Driving valuable traffic to a website is not that simple and does not happen by itself. It is crucial for business owners to know the keywords and theme that are relevant to their products and/or services as well as the most popular search terms.

Keyword research lets them understand where traffic could possibly come from and therefore, help them create a strategy that is most likely to succeed.

Use this research to arrange web content.

They should consider the highlighted keywords and themes in their search in planning the design of their website and use these as a guide in choosing the pages that will be presented on the domain.

The site’s navigation, accessibility, page hierarchy and folder structure can be enhanced to be successful in ranking high in search engines. Following these steps when building a website will attempt to increase chances of opportunity.

In addition, user experience teams can make use of search insights in constructing smooth UX experiences throughout the site. In the last few years, SEOs have observed that organic visibility has increasingly been linked to healthy user experience signals.

Perform pre-launch obstacle analysis.

When developing a new website, it is crucial to take repetitive SEO technical analysis into consideration.

Search engine indexing will be based on the web code and scripts that are free of obstacles. Though websites may look clear from the point of view of users depending on the way they are coded, it may be hard to crawl from a search engine’s perspective, which may result to a unfavourable performance in the organic SERPs.

When carrying out pre-launch analysis of obstacles, SEOs are able to cooperate with development teams before the launch of a website, to make sure that problems are corrected in a staging environment. This means that new websites have everything they need to perform efficiently when launched and this also avoids costly repairs later on.

Reduce risks while there is still time.

When a website is re-launched instead of building it from scratch, it is important to follow the right steps to maintain historic SEO visibility prior to pushing the button to “go live”. In the long run, search engines develop an element of history and trust with a website’s old pages.

In case these trusted pages are renamed or changed in the process of redesigning the site, search engines may find it difficult to understand these changes and figure out the correlation of the new pages with the previous pages. Usually, this will bring about a decrease in organic traffic and visibility, affecting the site’s performance and in certain instances, the business revenue.

When the SEO team is involved in the build and redesign process, they will consider this earlier in the process and make sure to take the required steps including 301-redirect mapping, submitting new XML sitemaps plus notifications in Google Search Console done completely to avoid the risks involved.

SEO Helps in Establishing Brand Awareness

The term brand awareness is the level of brand recognition a target market has. It shows how familiar customers are with the products/services of a brand. One of the most important steps in marketing a product/service is by building brand awareness.

SEO makes sure that products/services can be easily found by search engines by means of organic and regular search. When a website maintains its top ranking, it will be more visible to online users.

There is a greater possibility for viewers to click on the link, which directs them to the website. That being said, SEO can benefit a business by establishing its brand awareness a step further.

SEO Makes Sure that a Website is Mobile-Friendly

SEO enhances user experience since Google Search added another parameter to rank higher and this refers to making websites mobile-friendly.

In April 2015, Google Search made a statement on the way mobile-friendliness played an important role on the ranking of websites on Google Search. This change will enhance user experience and give smooth website navigation.

Businesses that like their website to register well on a range of mobile devices can ask the help of Google.

SEO Is Considered a Long-Term Marketing Strategy

The time that it takes for a website to reach top ranking is the same as it takes to pull it down the list. SEO is considered a long-term marketing strategy, wherein it takes a minimum duration of six months for a website to stay on top of the ranking.

Provided that Google algorithm is not changed or competition has not come up with more powerful SEO strategies, it will not be easy for a website to go down the search rankings.

SEO Helps in Gaining Market Share

When a website stays on top of the search engine list, it can be easily found by online users. These users can be considered as leads. The moment they find the information they need from the website, there is a possibility for these leads to convert into customers.

Chances are, customers will make a purchase, subscribe to a newsletter or sign up to become a member. Either way, conversion rate increases. As a result, the business gains market share.

SEO Enables Synergy of All Online Marketing Activities

Every online marketing strategy used plays a part in making SEO efforts successful. These marketing strategies that include blogging, content marketing, direct email, e-commerce, social media marketing and web management help improve rankings on many search engine sites.

Integrating all these online marketing activities and aligning them towards a common goal will enable businesses to succeed in their marketing strategies, which include SEO.

SEO Increases Followers on Social Media

Once a website lands on the front page of search engine sites, it will be discovered by more online users. Brand awareness can be very useful even in different social media channels. More often than not, when online users visit a website, they click on social media icons and in time, become followers.

IT’S FREE

Yep, that’s right, it’s completely FREE. There are no paid upgrades or premium listings, you just need to create an account, fill in your business details and verify you’re the business owner and you’re ready to go. Verification is accomplished by having a postcard sent to the business address with a verification code which you can then input and verify your listing, this process normally takes around 2 weeks, and if you make any changes to the address you will need to reverify.

Increase Your Visibility

Considering the cost, GMB is probably the best of all the listings and directories, in the UK we have companies such as Yell and Google Map Pack ListingThomson Local, who claim to produce miraculous results in bringing in leads and sales for a ‘small’ fee. With GMB though, you can easily show as the first business for your area in the local map pack with a well-optimised profile, including images, opening hours etc. this, in turn, means that more customers will see your company online and should then increase your website traffic, calls and walk-ins depending on the type of business you have. What Yell and Thomson Local won’t do is give you that level of visibility for free.

Make It Easy For Customers to Get in Touch

Depending on your type of business you will value certain business interactions differently. I prefer to receive phone calls, while other businesses will prefer people to physically visit their store. What GMB does is make sure that your contact details are clearly visible to anyone who sees your business either as part of the map pack or the knowledge graph (more about these later). As part of the map pack, you get your company name, phone number, reviews, locality and a map marker showing your location, plus the options to visit your website or get directions to your business.

It’s Constantly Evolving and Growing

I’m not entirely sure how recent the new features are but I’ve only just started seeing them on the profiles I manage in the UK. The most interesting new feature which is available on some profiles is the ability now to create blog posts, including a featured image, up to 300 words and a button to link to your site, offer or anything you fancy. These can be also used for creating specific offers or events. Another recent feature has been the ability to add a description for your business, plus you are also able to add your services to your profile (I’m not too sure where the services actually show up though).

An Online Gallery for Everyone

Your GMB listing can act as your online image portfolio, allowing you to add a seemingly unlimited amount of photos to your profile, including adding your company logo and cover images, you can also tag each photo by location, such as interior, exterior, at work, team, and identity, and even add videos to your profile. One key feature that many businesses will find useful is the fact that customers can also add photos of your business as well, which is especially useful for many tourism and events based businesses. This gives you the chance to really showcase your business online with product images, interior images or even images of your team hard at work.

Collect Reviews

One thing that a lot of potential customers will now look to for confidence in a brand are reviews, and Google My Business does an excellent job of giving customers a platform to leave a review about an experience working with a company or a product or service for a company. Business owners can also easily respond to reviews which helps to build a rapport with your customers, especially if you value repeat custom.

Insights and Knowledge Graph

What Google does really well here is it provides you with valuable insights such as how many people have viewed your business, where they viewed it and what actions they took. It’s obviously not as comprehensive as something like Google Analytics but it’s interesting to know the details of who’s viewing your business profile. The knowledge graph panel also seems to be constantly evolving and it is shown usually when you type in the name of a verified business, it uses Schema markup for a lot of its data and can also show your reviews, social media profiles, a platform for customers to ask questions about your company and also shows your business description from your profile.