We all know it. SEO is important. In fact we have seen sites that increased their business growth by a factor 5-6X with good SEO and others that increased sales by a factor 3.

But SEO is not just about showing up high with certain key phrases in search engines. It is also a way to make sure that when people actually click on your links, you deliver content that is meeting their expectations. So if all the optimized search terms for your site point back to a giant image or slider on your home page, chances are that many of those visitors who clicked on your link, will simply leave. You can check that by looking at your bounce rates for various search terms in Google Search Console.

In WordPress, you can optimize almost everything for SEO. Your pages, your images, your blog posts, your blog categories, you name it — you can optimize it. And that is exactly how you should be thinking about optimizing your content. What piece of content on your site would be the best first experience for someone who is looking for “enter your keyphrase here.” If it’s the home page, so be it. But chances are that there are other pieces of content on your site that are more relevant — and that will satisfy the searchers need better. If you can make that happen, they will spend more time on your site and they will more likely take actions that will lead to increased sales or donations.

Another Google tool that is often overlooked in the SEO game is your business listing. They are those listings you sometimes see in the sidebar of Google searches or listed as a 3-pack within a search results page.

I realize that some companies are preying on small businesses, trying to sell them their own Google business listing, but those are 100% free and yours to claim. Especially for local businesses, these listings can result in a tremendous increase in lead generation. For one site where we optimized the Google business listing, we were able to generate almost 500 calls in the first 3 months. Those are 500 calls that this small business did not get before.

Many sites, including Hubspot, Alexa, and Moz have great white papers if you would like to study up on the topic yourself.