What Is SEO Marketing? Definition, Importance, and Types (2024)
SEO marketing is a type of digital marketing that optimizes webpages for search engines like Google, helping your target audience find you more easily.
What is SEO marketing?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy aimed at improving a website's visibility on search engine results pages (SERP). Techniques include keyword optimization, quality content creation, link building, improving site speed, and mobile-friendliness.
Why is SEO marketing important?
- Search engines are the primary way in which users discover websites. So, whether you produce informational content or commercial products, being seen in search by users is a large part of running a successful website.
- In commerce, 59% of shoppers use Google Search to research a purchase they plan to make in-store or online, while around half of consumers use Google to discover new products.
- With that in mind, ecommerce SEO is a crucial part of ensuring your site appears early and often in search engine results for terms related to your offering. No matter how great your website might be, the simple truth is that visitors are unlikely to find you if your search rankings are low.
Follow these 4 SEO marketing tactics:
Whether you’re planning SEO for a Shopify store or another website, here are some core SEO marketing tactics to help you climb those search results.
- Keyword research
- Competitive analysis
- Active link building
- Image optimization
KEYWORD RESEARCH
To conduct keyword research, use an SEO tool like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Moz. These tools will reveal the keywords that generate your site traffic. Leverage this data to decide which existing keywords are most important to your website, and which new keywords you should pursue.
Ideally, keywords should be popular enough to generate significant traffic, but not so popular that you’re competing with websites and companies that have marketing budgets beyond your scope.
Use the tools above to narrow down your list of winnable and relevant keywords that are specific to your site.
Competitive analysis
By getting to know your competitors’ SEO strategy, you can formulate tactics that will help you climb the search rankings and overtake them. With high-quality, relevant, and comprehensive content, even small businesses can leverage SEO to outrank larger competitors and reach customers first.
A good starting point for competitive analysis is to find your competitors’ best-performing pages and figure out where their organic traffic is coming from. For instance, if a competitor is driving significant traffic through an informative blog post, use that post for inspiration when developing your own content. To do this kind of analysis, you can use many of the same keyword research tools above.
Active link building
To begin executing a linking strategy, make sure you’ve established a presence on social media platforms and local business directories. The foundational links you generate from these influential sites can give you a lift in search engine results.
Next, pitch your business or products to relevant websites or news outlets used by your audience. If you have subject-matter expertise, consider pitching a blog post that points back to your website. If all else fails, you can also pay to play by launching a PR campaign.
Image optimization
Start by incorporating descriptive keywords into image file names and writing helpful alt text for all the images on your site. This will give search engines another tool for determining whether your content is relevant and valuable.
Next, make sure your images are the optimum size and file format. Images that are too large will have longer load times, which affects the experience of visitors to your site. Large images can cause Google and other search engines to penalize your search rankings.