Explaining SEO through Brick & Mortar Analogy

Imagine you've got a brilliant roof tiling business in Bunbury, you've always done a brilliant job, the locals in Bunbury have fridge magnets with your number and consistently send people your way who say all the right lead in phrases, "I think I've got a few cracked tiles" & "my ceiling dripped during the last storm" etc. You're doing well down in Bunbury but in pursuit of a larger market, you decide to open a second location up in Perth... <- This is very much like choosing to expand your business online. You've got a strong business offline, but there is a larger potential market online.

After a few months it's not exactly going to plan, a few of your loyal clients in Bunbury referred a few people to you but overall you've discovered that you're competing with 30 other roof tiling companies who have an established base of customers in Perth and the brand recognition you had down in Bunbury hasn't really transferred to the Perth market. <- This is typically the case with businesses who look to expand online, building a website only to realise that all their competitors are online and leads have to find you online. Therefore, you need to rank higher for searches (phrases) that typically lead to closed business.

To improve your prospects, you decide to improve all areas directly within your control, especially the user experience. You get branding on your vehicles, develop a standard uniform, add warehouse signage & knock up some brochures to provide your clients with more information about your services. You also change a few of your processes to minimise the steps clients have to make to order and strive for faster turnarounds. By cross-selling your other services on jobs, you also increase profit by 20% and get a few more referrals for guttering and high pressure tile cleaning. 

With all of these changes, you start to see a steady increase in the number of enquiries and more people are referring leads to you. <- On-Page SEO is very much like this phase, making improvements to your online presence with more content, cross-selling (internal linking), better branding & "signage" (SEO titles and meta-descriptions) & faster turnarounds (speed optimisation).

It's now been a year and the changes you've made to your business certainly improved your position relative to the 30 other competitors, helping you prove your expertise by sharing relevant information with your clients that answers their individual, specific queries. To grow your business further and continue on your journey to crack into the top 10 roof tilers in Perth, you start attending networking events, regularly sharing your knowledge and becoming an authoritative figure in your domain. This leads to all the people at your networking groups and events referring potential clients to you and due to the trustworthiness of those referrers, you find that clients convert more often and hence your business grows organically as your customer base increases.

The above is an example of how off-page search engine optimisation works; by signing up to directories, contacting blogs and subsequently building external links and authority back to your site (domain authority), more customers can find you from multiple sources and the domain authority of the sites linking you flows through to your website. The more trustworthy sites that reference your website/business, the higher Google ranks you as you're able to provide searchers with highly trustworthy, authoritative information in your domain.