Oh, the wonderful world of SEO, it’s something that we hear about all the time, whether you run a blog from home or business, you will surely hear those three little letters crop up often. Now, while you may be more than familiar with the term SEO, you should ask yourself one thing “Do I really know what it is?”
You, like many people, may realise that you have absolutely no clue, and the truth is, there are a lot of companies out there that don’t want you to know either.
In this post, we are going to attempt to break down everything SEO; we want to cut through the jargon and create a comprehensive beginners guide to SEO that will help you determine what you need and where you need to apply it.
Here at PC Support Midlands, we hope that by the time you have reached the end of this post, you will feel more confident and filled with a little more knowledge when it comes to the wonderful world of SEO.
You Should Care About SEO
The first thing of substance that you need to understand fully is that times have changed, we know there are people out there that have been in business for up to 50 years and doing the same thing, while it may have been working, the truth is, your business has possibly been underachieving for decades.
In this section, we are going to be looking at something called ‘commercial intent’ and why it’s something that all businesses need to understand.
If we drift back 20 years or so and we think about advertising, what methods come to mind? Billboards, leaflets, newspaper ads, etc. Now while these methods were all great, they bring us to the poop sticking to a wall analogy of old.
The truth is, over the last decade, commercial intent figures have shown time and time again that well thought out and applied SEO strategies are way more effective than hit and hope, while you may not believe us, allow us to break things down.
Broad Advertising
For this section, we are going to imagine that you are a business that sells Paint in Yorkshire. Now, the population of Yorkshire as of 2019 was around 5.5 million people.
If you want to reach all of the people in Yorkshire, let’s be honest, doing it with flyers alone would cost over £50k, and then you’ve got to add the cost of billboards etc. At this point, we want you to really absorb that figure. To reach every person in Yorkshire, by “reputable old fashion means” it would cost over £50,000, be honest, that’s insane.
Now, while you may have hit everybody in Yorkshire, the chances are your hit rate will be low and your spending will outweigh what your business brings in by a hell of a lot, and this is where SEO is king.
SEO & Commercial Intent
So, we are now going to cut to the nitty-gritty and show why SEO is so important. If you are truly honest with yourself if you want something, what’s the first thing you do? Reach into your pocket and start searching, right?
Well, this is where commercial intent comes in, and it’s simply this, there are over 3.5 billion searches online in the uk every day. So, rather than your business spend 50 grand plus saying do you want to buy paint? your intention should be to exist as the only answer when a person heads onto Google and asks “where can I buy paint?”
Image Credit – PCSM
When it comes down to it, SEO is the one thing you should be focussing on in your business, not only can you become the trusted answer for millions of people every day, but you also open your business up to serve far more than just your local area.
The final thing we have to touch on here is cost, remember that figure we asked you to remember of £50K, well when you start to see how much SEO will cost and the daily reach of millions, then you may realise just how silly it would be to spend anywhere near that.
Psst, a little heads up, in the next post we are going to teach you how to reach 50,000 people for free (in days) if you are starting a new business.
Don’t Worry; This Is Just Part One.
Over the coming weeks, we are going to be going more details, and in part two we are going to be looking at website traffic and how it’s driven, so join us again why don’t you.
If you are keen to learn more, why not follow us and you will be notified when part two is released, trust us, you do not want to miss what’s coming.