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SEO Made Simple: 8 Business-Friendly Explanations

5 min read

Businesses can easily neglect optimizing organic traffic. This happens because stakeholders often don’t understand how it works or its impact on company goals.

Continue reading and learn how to translate SEO concepts into business terms so you can onboard your business partners and secure their buy-in for organic projects.

 

Improving Customer Experience

 

Customer experience is universally recognized as crucial in business, with 52% of customers indicating they would switch to a competitor after a single negative impression. But how do SEO factors impact this?

 

1. Broken Pages and Redirects

Business priorities usually include broken pages (404 or 500 errors) and implementing redirects. As online users, stakeholders understand the frustration caused by these issues.

Cleaning up redirects is a different challenge. Users don’t notice the change, but SEOs know that excessive redirects can harm a website’s performance. Redirects consume search engines’ crawl budget, dilute page authority, and negatively impact speed performance.

To explain this in business terms, consider an everyday example: Imagine having a shopping list, but upon arriving at your local grocery store, you find it has moved, adding 20 extra minutes to your trip. This “redirect” frustrates you. Similarly, search engine bots encountering too many redirects can get frustrated, potentially lowering your site’s ranking, akin to receiving negative customer reviews, which influence future buyers.

 

2. On-Page SEO

Optimizing individual webpages to rank higher and get more relevant traffic is crucial in SEO. In the offline world, this is similar to merchandising, aiming to keep users and bots engaged with your content. Higher engagement leads to lower bounce rates, potentially improving your rankings.

This is akin to supermarkets placing essential items like bread at the back, ensuring customers see other products as they navigate the store, enhancing visibility. Similarly, good on-page optimization can increase leads and boost your sales pipeline like unplanned items in a shopping basket.

 

3. Page Speed

Page speed significantly impacts SEO and user experience. Slow-loading pages increase bounce rates as users abandon sites that take too long to load. We all know the frustration of waiting for images to load or being unable to click or scroll quickly.

This is similar to visiting a coffee shop for a quick morning coffee. If your order takes too long, you’ll likely go elsewhere next time. The same principle applies to your website. Efficient service in a coffee shop enhances customer experience, just as a fast-loading website keeps visitors engaged and more likely to return. Search engine bots, like picky customers, won’t tolerate slow service.

Optimizing your website for speed can increase human and bots’ loyalty, potentially leading to higher rankings and sales.

 

Enhancing Lead Quality and Conversion Rates

 

Good customer experience is essential, but other factors exist for a successful business. You need to attract the right customers—those most likely to buy from you—and give them compelling reasons to do so. Several SEO strategies can aid in this effort online.

 

4. Meta Titles and Descriptions

“Clothes make the man,” and meta titles and descriptions make the first impression in the search engine world. These elements are critical for how both bots and users perceive your webpages.

Like a digital business card, the title tag is the first thing users see. It should be concise and clear and convey your page’s value immediately. The meta description acts as an elevator pitch, offering a summary that tells users to click on your result.

Just as a good introduction can lead to business engagements, well-crafted meta titles and descriptions enhance click-through rates and improve search engine visibility. They ensure that potential customers see the best of what you offer at first glance, similar to a well-designed and decorated shop window. Better meta tags can improve the conversion rate of leads entering the sales pipeline by setting the right expectations. In B2C businesses, where purchase decisions are often quick and emotionally driven, compelling meta titles and descriptions can also increase the number of closed deals.

However, creating good meta titles and descriptions requires preliminary research.

 

5.  Topic Research and Content Strategy

Understanding market trends and customer requirments is crucial and usually starts with in-depth groundwork. When planning to launch a new product or service, you typically conduct a preliminary discovery phase to clarify details and ensure a successful launch.

The same approach applies to your online presence. Instead of market research, you conduct topic and keyword research before creating your content strategy. You can create relevant content that understand their needs by understanding what your audience searches for. Compelling topic and keyword research improves traffic quality increases conversion rates and MQLs and nurtures leads through the sales funnel.

 

6. Structured Data

Structured data is another powerful SEO tool that can enhance lead quality and conversion rates. Though not directly visible to users, these pieces of code provide search engines with clear, specific information about your website’s content, similar to nutritional labels on food packaging.

Structured data enables search engines to display richer and more relevant search results, including enhanced snippets, product details, review stars, and other elements that make your results more attractive to users. This leads to higher click-through rates and higher conversion rates.

 

Building Brand Reputation

 

Improving lead quality and customer experience is crucial for daily business operations. However, investing in building your brand reputation is essential for long-term success. According to Qualtrics, 63% of consumers’ purchasing decisions are influenced by a company’s reputation.

 

7. Internal and External Links

Creating unique connections through internal and external links is vital for a website’s SEO. Internal links help structure information and guide users and search engines through your site. This concept is akin to 360-degree reviews in a company, which help managers decide which employees deserve promotion. Similarly, Google and other search engines aim to organize information and present the best results at the top rather than flooding users with too many options.

External links, meanwhile, signal your website’s credibility. They act like professional endorsements, similar to positive customer reviews or media mentions that validate your business’s stability. External links build a positive image, making your site appear trustworthy and leading to growth opportunities, enhanced brand reputation, higher deal sizes, and a more robust sales pipeline.

 

8. Anchor Texts

Another crucial element that impacts a website’s trustworthiness is anchor text—the clickable words in a hyperlink. Anchor texts are the invisible handshake between your content and users, much like a good introduction at a networking event.

Just as a handshake can set the tone for a business relationship, well-chosen anchor texts guide users and search engine bots to know the context of your linked content. They should be clear and descriptive to ensure a smooth transition to the linked page. Targeted use of anchor texts can boost the relevance of your pages for specific terms and serve as authority factors on a webpage level. They set the right expectations for the linked pages and naturally build trust with your users.

 

Simplifying SEO Speak for Business Stakeholders

 

SEO often seems like a mysterious process dominated by experts discussing Google’s algorithms. Business stakeholders may perceive it as a black box where money is spent without apparent results.

Explaining SEO concepts in business terms is crucial for the success of website optimization. This approach helps stakeholders understand SEO’s impact on growth and success, leading to increased support and resources for SEO efforts. If you still find SEO challenging and confusing, check out our monthly SEO packages and let the experts help you.

Shilpi Mathur
navyya.shilpi@gmail.com