SEO Basics Every Business Should Know In 2025
With the amount of content out there about this subject, i’m sure I’m one of the many articles you’re skimming for help – I get it, I was there once too!
Having recently started my business (in September) I like to think I’m one of the still-genuinely-passionate SEO experts out there that isn’t trying to “sell” you something. Frankly, I’m not even sure if I have the infrastructure in place yet to do so – I just want to be a trusted resource and provide honest information that I have learned over my decade of experience in SEO. So let’s get FIRED UP about SEO!
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO?)
Every company has a different way of saying the same thing – this is the way I explained it to my husband who sells industrial coding and labeling packaging equipment: SEO is about getting your website to the top of the search results on google, bing and other search engines for keywords that are relevant to your business, with the result (ideally) being this: if you rank higher you’ll get more targeted traffic, which will ultimately lead to more conversion and sales.
The formal definition per Google: SEO—short for search engine optimization—is about helping search engines understand your content, and helping users find your site and make a decision about whether they should visit your site through a search engine.Google does a great job of explaining this in their Starter Guide.
The simple concept of organic search rankings has warped into a ton of different names that are all the same thing: organic SEO, SEO advertising/marketing, earned search, organic search, search marketing, organic internet marketing, seo marketing optimization – however one thing it is NOT is search engine marketing – this is now only for PPC.
How Does SEO Work?
Google is basically a robot that uses crawlers to continuously scan the web and index new pages. It’s this “Googlebot” that uses an algorithmic process to determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site. Google’s crawlers are also programmed such that they try not to crawl the site too fast to avoid overloading it. For a more in depth look into how Google search works, you can check out Google’s In-Depth Guide to How Google Search Works | Documentation
Why is SEO important?
Google says that you usually don’t need to do anything except publish your site on the web. But the truth of the matter is that with the billions of websites out there, we need to be intentional and implement strategies to improve our rankings and out perform our competitors.
Top Benefits of SEO
Here are the top 5 reasons every online business should be doing SEO:
- Increases Traffic: ORGANIC traffic, which you technically don’t pay for, but earn it.
- ROI: SEO is one of the highest return on investment channels that exist as far as generating net new visitors are concerned.
- Great for Brand Awareness: The higher you rank, the more visible you are when people search keywords relevant to your brand.
- Builds Trust: SEO is essentially Google referring your business to people.
- The Competition Is Doing It: And of course your competition is doing it and making money from it. We should be getting those clicks and taking some of their market share. And we’ll go into what we learned about a few of your competitors a little later.
Top SEO Ranking Factors
I like to think of your website’s SEO like building a home. You cannot properly build a house without completing the previous steps otherwise your house won’t stand for long… similar to SEO.
Obviously there’s much more that goes into building a house than just that, but you need all three elements. SEO is the same way. Each plays a crucial role in ensuring your digital presence is both sturdy (and appealing).
SEO Basics You Can Do Right Now
Research your competitors
- What keywords are they ranking for that are relevant to your business
- What type of marketing are they doing?
- Are there other competitors that are showing up or bidding on their name for PPC?
Use what you have
Look at the “people also asked” section and the relevant words that come on your search results page
Optimize Your Google My Business and Social Profiles
Even if you don’t use them, I still recommend that you have them. The whole idea is that you want your company/brand to take up as much real estate as possible on page 1 of the search results. Not having them leaves it open to competition.
Feed the top and middle of the funnel!!
Focus on the buyer’s journey/sales funnel. With a heavy background in sales, you’ll probably see me write this more than once. Everyone wants bottom of the funnel leads, but that’s just not a realistic expectation. Especially if you’re in the B2B space. Over 92% of B2B will do heavy research and qualify potential vendors before they even contact you. Just look at your own buying habits, would you pay for something (over $50) without looking at the reviews? For B2B: 10x more since generally it’s their job or reputation on the line… if you can’t tell I’m very passionate about this. I could talk about it all day!
Create content that targets each stage of the (initial) buying process – awareness, consideration and decision. Talk to your sales team and find out what’s important at each stage. Make sure you’re also looking at your different buyer personas. Tailored content is key to turning visitors into prospects and ultimately customers.
PLEASE NOTE: There is a different strategy for the second part of the journey, which focuses on KEEPING the customer.
Leverage Free Tools
- Leverage the free tools that the top SEO software companies offer, which are Ahrefs, SEMRush, Moz, UberSuggest
- Note: for beginners, Ubersuggest is a great way to easily gain insight into key metrics without the price tag.
