The business landscape has taken a different turn; everything has been digitalised. If you have been paying attention, you know you have to adapt or die. Gone are the days when your business has to be listed in a thick phone book every year or hand out business cards for your customers rolodex – it still has to be in a sort of phone book – an online one called search engines (i.e Google).

That is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes into play. It can help you to boost your brand or business niche in the extremely competitive digital arena. It is a key component of your company website or blog. Search Engine Optimisation is important because it improves your search engine ranking. For your site to be high up on rankings, it needs to follow a set of rules that will optimise it to be read better by search engines. On top of this, SEO can also improve a customer’s experience on your site. You can also help search engines and your customers by providing them with relevant and useful digital content on your website or blog.

SEO helps with all of this as it influences many aspects of a user experience, such as attractive site navigation and content readability. An online campaign with good user experience is something that any business strives to provide for their users, to keep customers coming back and to entice new customers.

What can SEO do for you?

A good SEO strategy can help you optimise your website or blog no matter what service your company provides. Maybe you provide delicious meals, offer a service or supply consumer products. Whichever business you’re in, SEO tactics can be used to get your name out there. SEO practices are based on two primary strategies: location and description. Optimisation uses geo-tags to focus on the region where your business is physically based. It also targets regions within reach of your business. For example, a baker in uptown Dubai should use Dubai as a geo-tag, but they might also use Sharja, Ajman, or Murqquab. How is this helpful?

• In search engines, your name will be higher than neighbouring bakeries.

• Most people prefer familiar brands to novel ones.

• If your brand is familiar, customers will leave nearby shops and come to you.

Cashing in on SEO

Of course, customers shouldn’t know your brand for negative reasons. In Dubai, SEO can be utilised to present your brand in the best light. Those customers in Ghantoot or Al Samha should know you as the best baker in the region, so that the trip is worth the effort. By populating your website and social media pages with useful, relatable, optimised baking content, you will establish a reputation that will bring the customers flocking in. Remember SEO is a long-term game, you cannot rush it and you need to work on it constantly to yield results. Does this sound like a good idea? Share it with your friends and dig deeper into SEO tools, or get information from an online marketing company.