By Greg Kazmierczak, EPDM

SEO is the abbreviation for search engine optimization. SEO is the process of enabling your website to rank high in the search engine results. Simply put, you type in the keyword “roofer” and depending on how SEO-friendly your site is, you rank higher than your competition. It may also be defined as enabling search engine crawlers to find a web page. Google and Bing are the most-used search engines and account for approximately 95% of all searches conducted. SEO is not to be confused with PPC or paid search where you (bid) or pay per click to be at the top of the search results. Those results are at the very top of a search result page and are noted as “Sponsored Listings.” Search engines may differ in how they collect information from indexing pages.

4 Benefits of SEO 

1 –It Increases Visibility and Traffic To Your Website:

One of the main objectives of SEO is to increase the overall presence of your website on search engines. When potential customers search for “roof repair,”  “roof replacement,” or similar terms, a well-optimized website is more likely to appear on the first page of search results. This increased visibility converts into increased visitors to your website and increased call volume, thus providing your business with more opportunities to convert visitors into customers.

2 –It Creates Credibility and Trust:

Websites that consistently rank on page one from month to month in search engine results are perceived as more credible by users. The search engines not only focus on content optimization but also a better user experience for their customers. If you have a user-friendly site that is well developed and has proper SEO code on the pages, it will be rewarded by the search engines by showing up higher in the results. 

3 –Minimal Marketing Cost:

Compared to traditional advertising methods, SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy. Organic traffic generated through SEO is essentially free, and the long-term benefits certainly outweigh the initial investment of a successful campaign. SEO allows your company to target keywords relevant to your business and visitors will click on your listings after searching for your service. Also, if you hire a company to manage your SEO you are able to determine your overall cost per sale and/or cost per call by keyword with the reporting they provide. Regardless of hiring a SEO company, at the very minimum you should have Google Analytics installed on your site. It is a free tool that provides real-time reports on your visitor behavior. It reports on what they are doing on your website, their demographic makeup along with their interests and the particular keywords they typed into the search engine to name a few. 

4 –Competitive Advantage:

In today’s competitive business landscape, staying ahead of the competition is crucial. A comprehensive SEO strategy can give your business a competitive edge. By outranking competitors in search engine results, you increase the likelihood that a customer will click on your listing and not your competitors’ listings. 

How Search Engines Work

Imagine search engines as global databases for information. The search engines are engineered to recognize information from each and every website page that they index and relate it to other websites whose contents are similar. Considering that the databases hold an enormous amount of information and that search engines have to pore through every page indexed for searches, this is a nearly impossible task. Almost impossible — unless the search engine is powerful enough to have a system of organizing, linking, associating and finally producing results that answer the search query entered in the system by the user.

This is why powerful search engines like Google and Bing are popular. Their systems have the ability to give precise answers that satisfy a person’s search query. However, the web is a universe of information which has not been completely analyzed by search engines. Even the most powerful search engine only covers about 67% of the web. The other 33% of web content is uncovered.

In order for such powerful search engines to work efficiently, they need to be constantly monitored for faults, loopholes, inefficiencies and any other factors that compromise the quality of the search results. This monitoring and evaluation are done by the engineers of the company through algorithm updates.

For search engines to effectively rank your website it must offer the ingredients needed for search engine recipes. This is the definition of search engine optimization (SEO). Here is where a company like ours has been using http://ctwebmarketing.com for years. It is a great partnership and open communication is paramount for success. Small to medium-size companies need to hire a company to manage their SEO as it is quite involved and requires not only a special skill set but the search engines are constantly changing the way they display their search results. These companies are on top of those technical changes and know how to monitor and change your website according to the changes made by the search engines. Many of these companies also have to go through certification programs by the search engines. 

Some of the more common Search Engine Optimization Strategies

• Backlinks

• Keywords

• Title Words

• Link words

• Reputation of the website.

Types of SEO

There are several types of SEO that companies like yours should be focused on.

On-Page SEO:

On-page SEO specifically relates to optimizing your web pages to rank higher and increase overall traffic. This is accomplished by reviewing pages and optimizing content, the meta tags, images optimization, header tags, internal linking to other relevant pages of your site and URL structures that include relevant keywords easy for the search engines to understand.

 Off-Page SEO:

Off-page SEO refers to efforts outside the actual website such as link building, engaging in social media and developing a strong presence. Content marketing where you share articles or participate in blog and/or forum discussions. 

Local SEO:

Local businesses operating in a town or city can take advantage of local search results for businesses with a physical location. Optimizing Google in “My Business profiles” local citations and asking customers to review your business are all great and worthwhile efforts for local SEO. 

Mobile SEO:

There is a distinction between effectively optimizing your main website and your mobile website for search engine purposes. Special consideration needs to be taken into account for the mobile user experience. Factors like developing a mobile-friendly design, responsive layouts, and fast loading times on the customer mobile device all are key in the rankings. In many cases testing is done across numerous cell phone carriers to ensure acceptable load times.

Tasks such as search engine optimization can be overwhelming to those new to the world of website design and internet marketing. Search engine optimization is a technical skill that is not easy to master. It is more experience-dependent rather than knowledge garnered. However, as pointed out, it is a necessary evil and an outstanding tool that will enable countless people to find your website. Without it you are going to struggle. We all have businesses to run and sparing time to learn the art of search engine optimization may be a luxury we do not have. That is why we recommend a local business to consider outsourcing their SEO to a company that already has trained personnel. These companies are also able to effectively use marketing tools such as pay per click, Google AdSense and Webmaster Tools to optimize your website for success. MR

Greg Kazmierczak is the Senior Vice President of Sales for EPDM Coatings [www.epdmcoatings.com; 855-281-0940], manufacturers of liquid butyl rubber for roof leaks.