What Is SEO and How Can It Help Your Business?
By Christopher Reid ·
SEO in plain English
Search engine optimisation (SEO) helps search engines understand your website and helps people find your business through unpaid search results. When someone types a question or service into Google, SEO is the work that makes your pages a clear, trustworthy answer.
It isn't a single trick. SEO covers the content on your pages, how well your website works technically and how easy it is for visitors and search engines to find their way around.
The three main parts of SEO
Most SEO work falls into three areas:
- Content: pages that clearly explain what you offer, who it's for and where you work.
- Technical performance: a website that loads quickly, works on phones and can be read by search engines without errors.
- Navigation and structure: logical menus, headings and internal links so people and search engines can find important pages.
How SEO can help your business
SEO can help your business appear for searches related to your products, services and location. The aim is to attract relevant visitors and make it easier for them to contact you or become customers.
For example, a plumber in Brisbane benefits far more from appearing for “emergency plumber Brisbane” than for a general term like “plumbing”. Good SEO focuses on searches that match what you actually sell and where you sell it.
A practical first step
Search Google for the main service you offer plus your suburb or city. Note who appears, then look at your own website: does a single page clearly describe that service and location? If not, that's often the simplest place to start.