The Importance of SEO for Your Website

SEO_Header

We asked Jerome Harvey, ISC’s Digital Marketing Manager, to provide an overview of SEO (search engine optimization) and its benefits to help our broker partners better understand its value. Jerome has 20 years of SEO experience, working at United Airlines, Northern Trust, and Transunion and in the advertising industry. He also built an e-commerce platform leveraging his SEO expertise and experience.

What Is SEO?

One of the most critical tools for businesses and individuals seeking to grow their online presence, SEO is about providing the best answers to users’ questions. SEO involves a combination of technical aspects, high-quality content creation, and building and demonstrating expertise, authority, and trust (EAT) in one’s field.

Understanding SEO

Many assume SEO is all about including keywords in an article or web page. However, modern SEO is far more complex. It’s about ensuring your website performs at its best across these factors:

  • Technical SEO: Performing an SEO audit is a top priority. This involves reviewing the website’s technical aspects, including how fast a website loads, whether it is mobile-friendly, and how well the overall design and navigation functions. Search engines, particularly Google, now prioritize these technical aspects. Pages that are slow to load or difficult to navigate on mobile devices often get penalized in search rankings.

Tools like Google’s Lighthouse help evaluate a website’s technical performance. Lighthouse provides a comprehensive audit, identifying and recommending areas that need improvement, such as JavaScript downloads or large images that slow down a page. A fast, efficient website is crucial, as performance directly influences search rankings in Google.

  • Content Quality: High-quality content is another cornerstone of SEO. Search engines have evolved to analyze not just keywords but also the meaning and context behind them. Google uses artificial intelligence to read and understand content much like a human does, which means quality and relevance matter more than ever.

While tools like ChatGPT and other AI writing software have made content creation faster,

businesses should be cautious. Simply generating large amounts of AI-written content can be flagged as “search engine spam,” especially if the content lacks originality or depth. Instead, AI can be used to brainstorm ideas, but human expertise should tailor and refine content.

  • Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EAT): These are three critical factors that Google uses to evaluate the credibility and reliability of a website’s content. When creating content for your website, it’s essential to establish yourself as an expert in your field. For example, if you’re targeting the construction industry, your website should feature content that reflects thought leadership with useful information for contractors such as the pollution exposures they face and how they can address them or the importance of valuing projects properly for Builder’s Risk coverage.

Other ways to build authority include publishing articles in reputable journals or trade publications, speaking at conferences or appearing as a guest on webinars, and having a strong social media presence. All of these can signal to search engines that your firm is an expert in the field, making it more likely to rank higher.

What Is the Difference Between Paid and Organic Search Traffic?

Understanding the distinction between paid search and organic search traffic is also essential. Paid search results are the ads that appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Businesses pay for every click on these ads, which can become expensive depending on the industry. In contrast, organic search results—which are achieved through SEO—are free. Organic traffic is often the biggest and best source of website traffic because it tends to have a higher conversion rate.

For most businesses, organic search traffic is crucial. By investing in SEO, businesses can build a sustainable stream of visitors to their site without continually paying for ads. This not only saves money but also helps build long-term credibility and trust with customers.