What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all the actions you take to optimize your marketing for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo. And yes, even your YouTube content, or Instagram & Facebook posts can be optimized.
So what does that take? Well, there’s a number of different facets to SEO, some of which you are probably familiar with, and some of which you might not know so much about. Let’s start with the familiar, though…
Content Marketing
It’s the biggest part of search engine optimization. Why? Well, because the job of any search engine is to answer questions, and the best way for you to provide answers is by writing them out, right? So, that’s why it’s important to constantly be producing new, unique pieces of content that are designed to answer questions that you see being asked by your potential customers.
Now…that’s the bulk of it, but there’s some “weeds” that you should also know about; and that’s where we get into…
Technical SEO
You see, your website is massive. It’s massive even beyond what you think about when you think about all your inventory listings, or all your blog posts. And technical SEO is the way of structuring all of those things to make it fast, easy, and efficient for a search engine to crawl through, and know exactly what’s going on with your website.
You might be thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute. Isn’t that what I have a sitemap for?” Well, yeah, but even your sitemap needs to be optimized to be quickly and easily crawled. If not, you’ll run into bandwidth restrictions on the Google crawlbot. And that means that anything after that restriction, isn’t getting crawled at all!
How is SEO different from traditional marketing?
It’s more accurate to ask, “how does SEO fit in with traditional marketing?” Most of your marketing should have an SEO component, but that doesn’t mean the SEO needs to dominate what that marketing is. Right?
If you’re shooting a video, you should have an SEO looking at the video description & title, optimizing them for the questions that are being asked within the video itself.
If you have a blog post, the blog post should be tailored to answer questions. This is good marketing but it’s also good SEO, and that’s where we get that overlap. But within that, a technical SEO expert is going to look at your H1 tags, meta tags, and the internal link building structure to make sure that blog is tied to a number of other assets on your website, to make sure that it looks like one cohesive party saying, “Hey! We’re the best answer for this, and all these other things that are related to it!” That’s where SEO and marketing play along best.
So, are SEO and marketing the same? No, but they’re close cousins and they should definitely work together to get your dealership working at 100%.
Recap
SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is the means by which you optimize your marketing content for search engines. And since the job of any search engine is to answer questions, high-quality content which serves up those answers should be the foundation of your SEO strategy. The process of making it easy for search engines to find those answers within your content is referred to as “technical SEO” and should be performed on blogs, videos, and any other content that’s served up as part of your overall marketing strategy.
FAQ
Q1: What is SEO?
A1: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which refers to the process of optimizing marketing content, including website pages, blogs, videos, social media posts, etc., to rank higher in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Q2: What is the biggest part of SEO?
A2: The biggest part of SEO is content marketing. By constantly producing new, unique pieces of content that answer questions your potential customers have, you increase the chances of your content being ranked higher in search engines.
Q3: What is technical SEO?
A3: Technical SEO is the process of structuring your website and its contents in a way that makes it easy for search engines to crawl and understand your content. This involves optimizing your website’s sitemap, meta tags, internal link building structure, and other technical elements to ensure that search engines can easily identify and understand what your content is about.
Q4: How does SEO differ from traditional marketing?
A4: SEO and traditional marketing are not the same things, but they do work together. SEO is the process of optimizing your marketing content for search engines, while traditional marketing focuses on promoting your products or services through various channels. However, most marketing efforts should have an SEO component, such as optimizing video descriptions and titles or tailoring blog posts to answer questions.
Q5: Why is technical SEO important?
A5: Technical SEO is important because it helps search engines understand the content on your website, which can result in higher rankings and more traffic. By optimizing technical elements like sitemaps and internal link structures, you make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your content, ultimately resulting in better visibility in search engine results pages.