Are you a marketing graduate or currently studying marketing? Then you probably heard of the term SEO (Search engine optimisation). In this article, we are going to take you through the essential information every marketing graduate should know about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and how you could start a career as an SEO Specialist.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation is the process of improving how websites rank in search engines. Many factors go into how Google ranks a site, including its relevance to a search query, uniqueness of content, and page quality. By optimizing these factors, a website can enhance its overall ranking in search results. While other factors do come into play, it all starts with SEO.
The Importance of SEO
Because more people are searching on the internet for information about products, services, businesses, locations, or educational materials.
It is becoming more difficult for businesses and organisations to rely on traditional marketing and attract new customers, because users are switching to other forms of digital channels to look for what they want, like Search Engines (Google, & Bing) and social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Youtube)
This change in consumer behaviour has forced businesses to push more information through websites and social channels to make it easier for customers to find them online. So how does SEO play a role in this? As we discussed before, optimising a website for search engines makes it easier for businesses to target and show up in search results when customers are looking for their products or services.
Here are 5 reasons why SEO is important for Businesses:
- Businesses can reach customers who are actively looking for products and services.
- SEO can help businesses increase their sales and customer retention rate and promote growth.
- SEO helps keep potential customers informed by showing relevant information about their queries.
- Increases physical store/office visits through maps and navigation devices.
- Helps businesses save a lot of money that is spent on traditional marketing channels.
This new field has opened new opportunities for marketing graduates to specialise in a role that helps businesses improve their visibility in search engines. Such as an SEO Specialist, and SEO Manager.
Below are the key elements of SEO that every marketing should know if they decide to pursue a career as an SEO Specialist or SEO Manager.
What are the key elements of SEO?
- Content:
Content marketing is all about creating value through content. It involves writing content that relates to the services or products that organisations provide to their audience. Depending on the type of content and its purpose, the content will eventually help create a cycle of interactions that results in more sales.
- Keyword Research:
Keyword research is an essential part of SEO. Search engines like Google and Bing value content that is relevant to users’ search history, activities, and location. By analysing how these phrases are used by consumers, an SEO Specialist can determine what changes need to be made to an organisation’s websites to target the right audience.
Knowing the types of people who search for certain keywords can also help give you an idea of who might be interested in the products or services. This information can also be used to target the right audience with other forms of marketing materials.
- Off-Page Search Engine Optimisation:
This is a collection of activities rather than one activity that takes place off your website or externally and contributes to improving the visibility and ranking of websites or webpages on search engines. Off-page optimisation can include: getting other websites to reference/mention the organisation’s website, inviting guests to create articles on the organisation’s blog page, mentioning the brand/website on social media, and influencer marketing.
- On-Page Search Engine Optimisation:
On-page is the opposite of Off-page SEO.
On-page SEO is a collection of activities that take place on the website and contributes to improving your overall site’s visibility and ranking on search engines. On-page SEO optimisation can include: content, titles, headers, images, user experience, relevancy, and search intent, how much time users spend on a site, page load speed and click-through rate.
Gofficial log gf
Google’s official blog is a good source of information about Search Engine Optimisation.
- Authority:
Even though Google mentions that this is not the main ranking factor on search engines. However, some professional researchers in the SEO field have sites that Authority contributes to helping websites improve visibility on search engines.
So, what is Authority?
Authority is a measurement that determines or predicts how likely a website would rank in search engine result pages (SERPS) based on a calculated measurement (using machine learning) that determines how accurate content is and is trustworthy.
Some 3rd party industry leaders like MOZ.com and ahref.com refer to this term as (Domain Authority) and it is usually measured on a scale from Zero to Hundred.
Search engines tend to look at a couple of factors to determine the level of authority and trustworthiness of a site:
- The number of external websites pointing to a website (AKA Backlinks).
- The Authority (Domain Authority) of these websites.
- The number of links each of these domain’s links to.
“Furthermore, we found that the number of referring domains to a page is the strongest correlating backlink factor as far as rankings are concerned.” Ahrefs.com
- Relevancy:
Relevancy is one of the reasons why search engines made it quite easy to access the right information whenever we need it. What use would search engines be if you try to use the search Query “Used Cars” but kitchenware came us as a result instead?
Search engines determine whether the content should appear to a specific keyword based on how relevant or close the content is to that keyword.
So how do search engines determine relevancy?
- Page titles: Search engines look at page titles and match them with the search query used by the user.
- Language: Search engines will always try to provide users with search results that match their search query language.
- Page content: The overall content of the page is used to determine whether the content is relevant to the search query or not.
- Images: Search engines nowadays are advanced enough to tell whether an image is relevant to the site’s content or not.
- Location: If a person lives in Melbourne CBD and they look for restaurants on Google. Google will provide them with a list of results around their area. Therefore, it is important to tailor content to the location the business or website is based in.
Conclusion
If you are a marketing graduate or currently studying marketing and would like to specialise in search engine optimisation. It is a good idea to learn about the elements of SEO, how each element works and how they work with each other.
Below is a list of websites that can help you learn more about SEO:
- https://ahrefs.com
- https://moz.com
- Google’s Official Search Blog
- https://searchengineland.com
Enjoyed learning about SEO? Want to specialise in marketing? Get in touch with us today to discuss how our Bachelor of Marketing degree can get you prepared for a career in digital marketing.
