If you want your business to be successful online, then you’ll need more than a pretty website. You’ll also need customers to be able to find your content.

That’s where search engine optimisation (SEO) comes in: it’s the continual process of priming your site to get noticed and stay noticed by Google. And when it’s done right, it can have an immense impact on the ongoing success of your business.

As an example, SEO was (and continues to be) an integral part of the Elastic-led digital strategy that helped our client CDS grow their monthly lead value to $15 million. It’s powerful stuff, and it’s good for more than just leads — it also drives traffic to your site, increases awareness among your target audience by boosting your brand on search engines and more.

The Importance of SEO

if you want people to visit your website, you’ll need to invest in strategic SEO efforts led by a team with experience in the complex field of digital development. If you don’t, you can be sure your competitors will, and that means they’re likely to win customers that could have been yours.

If you’re still sceptical, here are a few SEO statistics that might change your mind:

• 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine: if visitors can’t find you on Google, they’re less likely to buy from you.
• 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines. If your website doesn’t rank in the top 10, searchers won’t visit your website.

And there’s one last clincher: you don’t pay for organic search traffic. Instead, Google rewards websites that best meet the needs of their visitors: the top spot goes to the best website, not the highest bidder. But how do they define ‘the best website’? Well, it’s complicated. There are many factors that their algorithms consider, from popularity to site visits and fresh, new content, so in order to be competitive when it comes to SEO, you need to start with a website built for success.

A good SEO strategy is tricky to set up and it involves more than just using the right keywords – especially if you want to score a coveted top 10 spot – which is why it’s worth trusting an expert to handle it for you. Google is great at sniffing out websites that try to fool their system into gaining high rankings without doing the legwork, but when a qualified digital strategist has woven together your SEO strategies with your paid marketing campaigns, PPC and SEM strategies, you’ll have a well-rounded approach that reaches your target audience in a variety of ways across all digital platforms (pretty cool, right?).

Okay, now you’re sold on SEO. Let’s talk basics so you can start reaping the benefits.

(Still sceptical? Head over to our case studies page to look at how our search engine marketing services have helped other businesses like yours thrive.)

SEO Tools

There are literally hundreds of tools and resources out there for those wanting to improve their SEO, and they all provide different data sets, advantages and disadvantages. Our team of SEO experts has years of experience in selecting and integrating these tools into a 360-degree digital strategy that benefits your business in a holistic way. Here are some of the most well-known tools that act as a starting point to digital strategy and what they can provide:

• Google Ads Keyword Planner: Useful for finding relevant keywords to the ones you’re already ranking for, finding out how competitive your keywords are and giving you traffic volume estimates for your keywords.
• Google Trends: Lets you know how well your keywords have performed over a period of time and also offers related keyword ideas that are currently trending.
• Google Analytics: Allows you to analyse how users are interacting with your website, gives you demographic information and lets you see how different keywords & pages are performing.
• Google Search Console: Basic analytics information and also lets you see which websites are linking to your page and shows you how responsive your website is (another ranking factor)

What’s next?

Marketing is an ever-changing landscape, but a deciding factor in the future success of your business is going to be how visible you are online. SEO is one of the cornerstones to improving your online presence, and since organic search is the biggest driver of qualified traffic to websites, it’s one that should be at the forefront of your strategy. If it isn’t, you can be sure you’ll be out paced and overtaken by your competitors, who will happily scoop up your prospects. With SEO playing such a key role in your business’s success, why would you trust anyone but an expert to handle your SEO strategy?

That’s where Elastic comes in. Besides the tools above, we have access (and experience) across a wide variety of industry-leading SEO tools. Whether you’re starting a brand-new site or your existing one needs a revamp, our skilled team can help boost your brand’s rankings & visibility, no matter what industry you work in. Let’s get started!