How would it feel to gain more customers online without spending a single euro on advertising? This is possible when you optimize your company's website and/or online store for search engines.

The most successful companies increase their traffic through search engine optimization, or SEO. Often, ads are also run simultaneously, but thanks to SEO, people can find the website without them, and the company is never entirely dependent on advertising.

Here is the main reason why you too should not ignore search engine optimization.

In addition to traffic, search engine optimization has other benefits; it, for example, helps increase sales and boost trust in your company as your website appears high in Google's search results. If SEO is unfamiliar to you and you want to better understand how and why search engine optimization really works, keep reading!

What is search engine optimization?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a process during which the Google ranking and visibility of a website or online store are increased through various measures.

In search engine optimization, websites are improved to better meet customer needs while simultaneously fulfilling the criteria set by search engines. When a homepage/online store checks these two boxes, Google will start recommending it more frequently to people making searches relevant to the company's operations.

This, in turn, is reflected in higher rankings of websites in search results, increased visitors, and growing conversions, i.e., sales and inquiries.

What does search engine optimization include?

Google recommends in the first search results the websites that it believes offer the best user experience for the visitor who made the search. This is precisely the aspect that search engine optimization aims to influence.

Search engine optimization is improving a website to be user-friendly according to Google's criteria and best practices.

This includes refining various features from technical solutions to content with the customer in mind, but keeping Google in mind. Another essential part of search engine optimization is to identify and strategically utilize keywords, as well as to produce high-quality, beneficial, and engaging content for customers.

It is not possible to use any tricks; instead, the company's website/online store must genuinely embody all the aforementioned aspects, meaning it should be as customer-friendly as possible.

How does search engine optimization work?

In order for Google to recommend the right websites to people making searches, the search engine's bots browse the internet, sifting through and evaluating the content they find.

Googlebot moves through internal links on a website and external (between different sites) links, which is why linking is an important part of search engine optimization. The bot's task is to examine the content of each page it finds and understand what each page is about, how well it functions, and how useful and original the information it contains is.

The more pages of your website the bots give the green light to, the more likely Google is to display your homepage or online store among the first organic search results.

What factors affect search engine rankings?

Many factors affect a website's search engine rankings.

But the most important of these are the previously mentioned user-friendliness, search engine friendliness, content, and internal linking. 

High-quality online content provides visitors and potential customers with the information they are looking for and need to progress along the purchase path, while also increasing the likelihood that the site will receive external links from other websites, such as blogs and social media.

User and search engine friendliness ensures that people stay longer on the homepage/online store, and that Google considers your site technically functional and worth recommending. Thanks to internal linking, both Google and customers can navigate your website better.

Factors affecting a website's ranking in search engines:

• User Experience

• Charging speed

• Responsiveness (optimization for mobile devices)

• High-quality and (sufficiently) extensive content

• Relevance and Density of Keywords

• Domain Authority

• Number of internal links

• The number and quality of external links

• Site code‍

Search engine bots use all this information to form an understanding of whether your website is worth recommending in Google search. Therefore, ensure that at least the most important features are in order.

Do you want to get more customers online? Is your company's website or online store not selling effectively enough or not easily found on Google?