You don't have the money for expensive banner ads and online ad campaigns? You don't have time to prepare professional content for readers? Then I have the solution for you: carry out a search engine optimization of your website.

What exactly that is, which parts it includes and what it depends on, you will learn in this chapter.

Search engine optimization is abbreviated to SEO after the English term Search Engine Optimization. It encompasses such different areas as onpage and offpage SEO, technical and content SEO and is a cyclical process that must be gone through just as regularly as the wishes, topics and interests of the users of the webpage also change.

Before a user comes to our pages, he or she has most likely googled for terms. The Google search engine is therefore the number one place to go on the web. The goal of SEO measures is to be found there by the right users on the right topics.

The desired results of all search engine optimization effort are:

• To be positioned with relevant search terms
• To increase the number of organic traffic (users who do not come to the company's website via paid advertisements).
• Increase conversions (users not only read the page, but also register/contact the company, etc.)
• be found internationally or locally

How do we achieve this? The first step is to take stock. To do this, a so-called SEO audit must be carried out, which identifies all errors, quirks and shortcomings, but also the strengths of your own website, so that you know what needs to be improved in order to score better with Auntie Google. Together with the analysis of the content and technical aspects of one's own website, the digital positioning of the company in comparison to its market competitors must also be considered.

The analysis is the basis of all subsequent steps and without it, no SEO can take place.

Now it pays off that we already know exactly which target group we have for our products or that we have even already created detailed buyer personas for our most important services. In addition, it must be clear which topics are particularly important, which products should be in focus and which geographical area the presentation should cover. In the international field, for example, the search engine Baidu may be more relevant for China than Google. It is also useful to make a list of the most important competitors.

In order to carry out an SEO analysis well, various tools are needed. Possible tools are e.g.

• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• Screaming Frog
• Ahrefs
• Sistrix
• SEMrush
• etracker

These tools can be used to analyse exactly which visibility index your web pages have on the desktop or in the mobile view, which keywords you occupy and how you rank with them. It also becomes clear which pages are indexed, i.e. can be found by Google at all, how many users you have on your pages (traffic), whether there are user-generating backlinks to you and from whom. The technical website structure is also examined and the relevance of the existing content is checked.

If you implement SEO correctly and at the same time carry out excellent content marketing that provides important information in an appealing way for your target groups, then your websites will rank better and better. This means that you will be found further and further ahead on Google for the appropriate keywords. As a result, you will be found without having to spend a lot of money on advertisements and banner ads. This is called organic ranking.

Nevertheless, we have seen that corresponding tools with which one learns about search engine optimisation for one's own pages and subject area are quite expensive to purchase. For a complete licence of Sistrix, for example, about 500€ per month are currently due. It is also advisable not to rely on just one tool. Google Search Console and Google Analytics are free of charge, but they do not offer all the analysis options as the other programmes.

This is one of the few times when I recommend putting some money in your hand and bringing a good SEO agency on board to do the analytics you need to get started. Unless you have a really competent team in the group that carries out such analyses for you as an internal service and you pay for this anyway via a levy.

SEO agencies specialise in SEO audits and carry them out for many clients. This has the advantage that they usually have several licences of common tools, so that you can combine analysis results from different angles

they know how to use these tools as well as they know how to use the free Google tools

So it saves you a lot of effort if you give out the tasks in a targeted way. For your quality management system, you also undergo annual audits by an external auditor.

What should be considered when commissioning the agency for an SEO audit? You can find out in the article on the SEO audit.