Search Engine Optimization: A Critical Tool for Marketers

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quality and traffic on your website along with increasing brand awareness through organic (non-paid) search engine results. In a different sense it can be easier to view SEO as a ranking system, where you optimize a piece of online content so engines like Google will rank it higher.

The goal of SEO is to generate as much organic ads at the top of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) as possible to generate the most interest from users. Having an effective SEO strategy will also help with the cultivation of your brand and website.

Why is SEO Important?

SEO is a critical tool for digital marketers due to the sheer amount of traffic that online search engines warrant. While forms of paid advertising can generate traffic to your website, organic search results have more credibility among users and covers more digital ground. Another advantage of SEO and organic results is that they pay for themselves. When you publish a quality piece of content and users continually refer back to it, increasing the reputation and traffic of your website over time. This also allows for stronger relationships to form between your content and the users.

How can you use SEO?

Much like many practices in marketing, SEO has many different tools at its disposal. One of the integral tools in SEO for marketers is Key Word Research. This entails using words in your content that helps maximize the organic search ranking. Relevant keywords are important for users as it helps streamline their search process. Here are some tips to help the search for keywords:

• Understand volume: Words that pop up more frequently in searches tend to yield a higher search engine ranking. Be aware though that there is the risk of over saturation and your content can become buried.
• Words by region: Understanding the dialect of your specific region will greatly help increase the effectiveness of keywords. For example, writing an article about "soda" may not appear as one of the top results in a different part of the country where people say "pop" instead.
• Context matters: When users search a word on a search engine, their motives can be vague. If someone searches "shoes" for example it could be that the person is shopping around, looking at images, or simply comparing brands. One way to help narrow this search is by looking at words that are less popular. It may seem counterintuitive but less popular keywords can help with increasing conversions.

Two more tools are "White Hat SEO" and "Black Hat SEO", wherein different optimization practices are taken.

White Hat SEO uses practices that are more focused on organic searches and the practices that optimize them and provide the most user focused experience. Some guidelines and practices of white hat SEO include:

• Following rules for search engines
• Not using clickbait to generate traffic
• Having relevant content
• Adds value to the user experience

Simply put, white hat SEO is the route to take if you want to generate traffic on your website that also creates meaningful relationships between users and your brand.

Black hat SEO is the inverse of White hat. Black hat SEO can be characterized by using any sort of tactic to fool or spam a search engine to have your website appear at the top of the SERPs. Here are some of the practices that constitute black hat SEO:

• Duplicating or copying content
• Having misleading titles
• Cloaking website titles: wherein the link takes the user to a different site completely
• Having invisible text: This is done by putting keywords at the bottom of an article and changing the text color to change the background.

While black hat SEO can be effective, it is also a great way to get your website unindexed. Meaning that Google will take your website off of their SERPs.

A great way to gauge the effectiveness of your SEO is through the use of EAT by Google. EAT is an acronym that stands for:

• Expertise: How much do you know about your topic?
• Authority: Are relevant figures/influencers in your field linking back to your content?
• Trust: Are you being ethical in your web practices?

If you hit these criteria then your website has a greater chance of generating organic searches.

What is Link Building?

Link Building is a critical element of SEO as it helps generate the amount of links that other websites use which divert back to your website. What this allows for is an increase in the volume of links that users can take back to your website, increasing the familiarity with your brand. The best part is, if done correctly link building can generate an abundance of organic searches.

Why Link Building is Important and how to do it

Link building sole intent is also at the core of SEO: generating organic searches. Linking other pages on your article, for example, will increase the amount of viable links embedded within it making it score higher in the search engine ranking which increases organic searches. You can also imbed links within your website that takes users to other parts of your website. This is known as internal link building and it is nice because you are the only one who regulates how many of these links that you use. There is also external link building wherein other websites use your links and reference them. A combination of these practices will help build links and generate more traffic.

For example, if I were to write an article about how my fantasy football team did over the course of the season and recommendations for other players, there are some links that I would build in to increase the validity of my article. I would provide a link to the pages where I found each player's name and image courtesy of either the NFL or ESPN. There would also be a link to the scoring metrics courtesy of the platform that was used for my team. What this tactic does is help increase the likelihood that my article appears before others. It also allows for an increase in the probability that others checking out the other links will click on mine and check out my article as well.

How SEO affects the Sports Marketing Industry

I have been a passionate sports fan my entire life and would love to apply my marketing skills in a sports setting. SEO will be crucial when working in the sports marketing industry as it will help increase the awareness of a given team or pressing topic within the sports world. An effective SEO strategy will generate organic traffic to the organizations website which not only increases the amount of users on their sight, but will hopefully increase the number of fans as well.

An example of how I would utilize SEO in a sports marketing setting would be if I worked for the Seattle Mariners. My practices would include:

Articles about team related topics (trades, injuries, performances, etc.), social media content, website content. These would include practices from SEO, including:

• Using clear images that attract user attention
• Linking credible sites in my work
• Ensuring that any image used is linked properly
• Using clear and concise titles that avoid click-bait
• Having keywords throughout my work

Being an effective digital marketer is nigh on impossible without a proper understanding of SEO. Following these practices and guidelines will help generate organic relationships between the brand and consumer.

#seo #wwudigimark

References:

• https://neilpatel.com/what-is-seo/
• https://www.metricmarketing.com/blog/the-importance-of-seo-for-your-business-benefits-of-seo-why-seo-is-so-powerful
• https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/what-is-googles-e-a-t-why-is-it-important-for-seo.htm
• https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/why-search-engine-marketing-is-necessary
• https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
• https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-link-building-and-how-does-it-work/
• https://zerogravitymarketing.com/seo-in-sports/