Why Is SEO Important for Business: 8 Compelling Facts and Case Studies
The modern technology user is smart and experienced. If a site does not live up to expectations, the user may never return to it. Bypassing search engine algorithms or the use of technological tricks for the growth of site visits is something of the past. For more on algorithms and sanctions, see Google Algorithms That Affect SEO.
The user can be offered new knowledge, encouraged with bonuses, and can still struggle to keep their attention to the product or service. An individualistic, tailored approach has become especially relevant. Marketers have developed content strategies and quality technical solutions that are able to help. This is precisely the importance of SEO – to lead the users along the paths of high-speed routes of information, while not allowing them to get lost in winding roads of the internet. It is equally important to make sure that the end result is also useful for the creators of goods and services, as well as their offers.
SEO – the key to the heart of search engines and users
SEO is a universal tool for maintaining high site positions and effective investments in a commercial web product. Search engine optimization helps to promote the brand and create a positive image of the company.
SEO remains the universal way to optimize your site to achieve your strategic goal. Using a well-thought-out strategy, you can achieve the desired results including user loyalty.
Three classic SEO pillars – quality, volume, and organic traffic
The phrase, “classic is eternal” can be applied to many scenarios, including SEO. Despite the fact that SEO is constantly transforming, there are always three main principles for attracting a user:
- Creating quality content
- Increasing the number of visitors to the site
- Receiving organic traffic
All three principles must be considered at the same time, and this is not always an easy task for SEO professionals. Success for one of the principals does not always guarantee success for all three. For example, if the traffic is not organic and does not directly relate to the theme of the site, it can give minimal commercial results in the form of sales and contact with potential customers.
Why do you need quality traffic?
Traffic on the site should be optimized for the actual goods or services that you are offering. A huge number of views due to manipulations will not convert into sales. Adding popular search words that are irrelevant may increase your views in quantity, but will remain figures that do not turn into profit. This is why traffic should be directly related to the proposed product. Otherwise, it simply does not make sense to invest in the website or its promotion.
Why is traffic integrity important?
Organic results are the key to the success of disseminating information about a product or service. Advertisements make up a significant part of the search results, but they are temporary and do not always offer the same thing that free search results can.
How is the volume of visits increasing?
Traffic that is useful for the site is grown by adding natural links to useful content. They appear on the search results page. For Google, these are all organic results in SERP. Read What is the SERP in 2020?
TOP 8 Facts about SEO Importance
SEO is an indispensable way to increase traffic.
Artificial intelligence managing search engines and SEO
Artificial intelligence actively manages search engines. Google made one of their first statements in 2015 about the operation of the RankBrain algorithm for training in finding the most relevant answers to user requests.
According to analysts, such an algorithm uses a lot of data that is not directly related to the request itself, such as the user’s location, their personal profile, and specific verbal constructions of the request. Artificial intelligence determines the true intent of the user. Therefore, there is no influence on such a mechanism for determining the quality of content.
Moz co-founder, Rand Fishkin, partially disagrees with this statement. He believes that there really is no point in resisting the algorithm, but there is an opportunity to change the reaction of algorithms at the level of primary data. Algorithms use certain signals, starting points, and basic information to make decisions. If this doesn’t work out, the starting signals can change which will affect the result of the work of artificial intelligence.
In his opinion, the recipe for RankBrain algorithm optimization consists of three components.
- The creation of many necessary signals for search algorithms
- The optimization of resource reputation signals
- The naturalness of content presentation
Rand Fishkin explains that many signals act as the logic of SEO actions to maximize user satisfaction such as the following:
- Variety of link text
- Weightiness, depth of content
- Keywords embedded in the content
Reputational signals of a resource are used in the SEO-development of site content. It should show the specifics of the site, clearly indicate why the site was created, and determine how it will be particularly useful to the user. For example, if the site has the heading “Treasures”, then the content description should indicate how in-depth the information in this content will be. The site may offer new, exclusive information about treasures, or they can tell you information that is not as in dept.
The naturalness of the content is another important component of modern content. Artificial intelligence bypasses the tricks of copywriters or content managers who tryg to artificially increase the density of keywords. If the content of the site does not contain answers to important questions, there will be no useful information for the user, and the site will not be successfully promoted.
SEO and E-A-T: high Google performance
The expertise, authority, and trustworthiness of information is also known as the principle of E-A-T. Google considers it to be the most basic source for evaluating a site before lifting it up in search queries. E-A-T helps determine the true purpose of the generated content. The same mechanism separates useful content from that created with the aim of misinformation, deception, or harm to the user.
This means that for the effective use of the E-A-T principal, the site content must be created by experts or professionals. For example, if a site talks about architectural services, content should be created by architects and designers. Their texts can be processed by content managers or copywriters for ease of reading. A non-professional’s attempt to create material may result in the failure of website promotion. The higher the expertise of the content creator, the higher the rank of the information provided, and the higher the site position will be in the search results.
Confirming the qualifications of the content author is LAO included in the list of the most important factors for assessing the quality of a web page. This is exactly what Google Text Assessment does in its renowned Quality Evaluator Guide.
Quality Evaluator Guide
Those who try to deceive Google will then have to compete with at least 10 thousand experts who verify the authorship of texts on websites.
How can SEO be used to increase loyalty in users and the reliability of their information? Jennifer Slegg, an expert on search engine marketing, claims that it’s enough to implement several SEO-solutions by doing the following:
- Increase the number of useful links to web resources that deal with similar topics.
- Create your own content that has both value and uniqueness.
- Access the website’s content through links to its own publications, indicating the authorship of the content, their level of competence, and contact details to help double-check the accuracy.
Special care in creating and optimizing content should be shown by YMYL sites. According to Google, these are sites with content that could potentially provide knowledge in the areas of life, health, financial resources, or human security. Examples of these types of sites are the news, medical sites, sites for financial transactions, sites for training in driving, etc. SEO for such sites plays an important role because the search engine immediately lowers its position if the site does not adhere mostly to the competency requirements of published authors.
Another digital marketing expert, Jason Barnard, strongly advises maintaining the competency of the web resources even when the company is offline. These can be certificates, awards, diplomas, decisions on assignments, victory in commercial orders of large companies, or open tenders recognized by other entities (preferably independent of the recipient). This will be a significant marker for search engines to confirm the accuracy of the data and the quality of the disseminated information.
Taming BERT and other algorithms with SEO
The Google BERT algorithm reads user requests as an experienced scientist. It not only glides over the series of words proposed to it, but it is able to understand the context and meaning of the request.
For high site performance and conversion, it is very important to help BERT correctly read the resource and its content so that it can quickly and accurately understand the context of the request.
Google employee Danny Sullivan says that artificial intelligence algorithms are not optimizable, and they offer a turnkey solution from a significant amount of data.
BERT receives and analyzes website data submitted to it from the web source itself. That is why corresponding to the BERT algorithm begins with classic SEO: quality content and technology solutions. The BERT algorithm always works for the user by trying to correct input errors, transforming them into true data, and processing complex queries in different languages into information that is comprehensible to artificial intelligence.
That is why SEO is so important for a site that strives to get into the top of search results.
UX and SEO – learn and understand users
SEO is especially important for creating a strong connection between users and specific online products. Bork Murray, a digital marketing specialist and SEO business expert, believes that this is precisely the direction that online marketing is headed.
A competent SEO approach is required for an ideal website UX wrapper. This approach includes the following:
- Planning of high-quality site display in search results
- Creating the effect of positive emotions after visiting a particular page, using the content of the site
- Personalization, remarketing, and any other actions as a response to the user leaving the resource in order to restore communication
To promote the site, it is critical to create good technical content of the site design. There is no direct evidence that this is an important element for the growth of traffic and site conversion. However, the fact that such giants such as Google constantly hone all the technical aspects of sites may already be a signal for specialists, said IBM SEO-manager, Keith Goode.
SEO and Knowledge Graph – a custom approach to increase the number of users
SEO requires solutions designed for the distant future. entering data into the Google knowledge base is typically a non-standard approach for a company to increase their views and strengthen their position. At the same time, you can transfer data about the site itself, the company, its specialists, and manufactured products to the knowledge base.
Since 2012, this knowledge base and digital archive stores information on 570 million “entities” and 20 billion facts. This volume of information is formed gradually and accumulates knowledge for the search engine.
The Knowledge Graph is an important source for the search engine and the formation of search queries. If you are wondering how to add quality information there, a special interaction panel is used along with information verified from the Knowledge Graph. They are also not the only source of knowledge for Google.
The search engine complements information from the other following open sources and databases:
- Wikipedia Knowledge and Data Encyclopedia (including Wikidata)
- CIA World Factbook
- Google My Business
High-quality data processing in these open databases affects the evaluation of published information by search engines and the increase in potential conversions of the site.
Backlinks: a super important SEO solution for search
The work of SEO experts includes creating a quality website ecosystem with many relevant, active backlinks to content. It’s not always clear why this SEO technique is so important, yet it still needs to be developed. Well-known marketer Brian Dean believes that if a page has lots of links, then search engines will rate them as better content, raising them in the search results.
Backlinko
The index of pages with a large number of links is 3.8 times higher than a standard site or publication with information that was not acquired by other internet resources. This indicator already makes the user believe that the content is read and cited. Read more in the Build High-Quality Backlinks article.
Backlinko
SEO increases time on site/viewing time
The time that users spend on the site is important. This is what SEO experts call the duration of the content views on the site. The higher the duration, the more valuable the site is, and the higher it is in SERP. If it is possible to hold the user for +3 seconds during viewing, this increases the chances of rising one step in the search bar, according to the calculations of Brian Dean.
SEO tools allow using various methods to keep the user longer on the page or on the site itself. This increases the value of the site for search engines and while also increasing the chances of expanding your circle of users. Multimedia content such as video, photo, graphics, a fascinating interface, and other elements are often used to keep users on the site longer. This will help to keep the user present on the site with access to links and other internet resources from the site.
Backlinko
Visual Search SEO – a new channel for attracting users
A new direction in website optimization is Visual Search SEO. By transmitting the image of the object to the search engine, you can significantly increase the chances of visits to the site. A digital photo of an object can be scanned and searched using Google Lens – a billion times (2019 information) and with Pinterest – 600 million times per month. This is the latest data on the new approach of search engines and services. For more information on optimizing your site with Pinterest, see Pinterest SEO in 2020.
Despite the fact that this method of searching for information is only in development, it is successfully mastered by many search engines, such as Bing.
Modern SEO – New challenges
The time of simple SEO solutions is in the past. New challenges are being created through search engine algorithms, rapidly developing competition for each user on the network, and powerful multi-factor engagement strategies.
Digital marketing is becoming more complex by using data obtained after studying the behavior of search engines. Search engines are also constantly changing and adjusting their algorithms. They pursue their goals, and they strive to make the content not only rich in commercial content but also interesting and useful.
Online space is a true battlefield for the intelligence of search engine developers and SEO experts. Only those who can constantly update their knowledge and skills will survive.
