What is SEO, and why should you care?
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is obtaining visitors to your website via unpaid, editorial, organic, or natural search results in search engines. Good SEO seeks to raise the position of your website in search results pages, like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ecosia, and others. The idea is that the higher your ranking, the more people will see and click on your site - so more traffic will come to your website.
First, let's talk about on-page SEO. Do some keyword research to know you're speaking directly to your customers. The easiest way to do this is to Google search the keywords that you think people are searching for to find your business. Once you know what keyword your customers are searching for, you can incorporate some synonyms. You can also include many paid tools to discover what keywords people use to find your business. A great free tool is Keyword Hero.
You're also going to want to create relevant content. After researching your keywords, you should know what your customer is looking for, so you want to present it in a way that attracts them to your business. Educate them about your business and meet their expectations. Because Google is looking at how customers interact with your site over time, having an engaging content strategy will help drive your rankings higher.
Next, you want to incorporate internal linking. Internal linking can keep customers engaged with your website for extended periods, giving Google the impression that you're dishing out quality results. Internal links are links within your content that link to other content on your website so that a visitor may come to your site. Internal linking recommends high-quality, high-authority pages to Google. Customers looking to learn about one topic may stay on your site to learn about multiple subjects. When people stay on your website for an extended time learning about the topic, Google automatically recognizes you as an industry expert.
Too often, an overlooked and straightforward way to improve your SEO is by including appropriate metadata and image descriptions on every website page. Each page of your site needs to have a meta-data description and a primary header so that bots understand what the page is about. In addition, every image on your site should have an image description; these descriptions make it easier for people with visual disabilities to understand what your page is all about, increasing the accessibility of your website and, therefore, your overall Google ranking.
Another valuable type of SEO is off-page/offsite SEO.
Off-page or offsite SEO is exactly what it sounds like, content that does not live on your site. You can improve your site's ranking by networking in real life. One of the main ways people accomplish off-page SEO is through guest blogging. This is a way of doing content marketing and link building that is done outside of your platform. It's aimed at allowing you to drive referral traffic to your website from a website that has a higher authority than yours; sometimes, this can be accomplished through joining associations and gaining accreditation. Then the accrediting authority will link to your site from their site, increasing your SEO.
Another way to increase your offsite SEO is by establishing yourself as a subject matter expert. This might mean local journalists or bloggers will interview you for insights into a particular industry. Once they publish their interview, they will link back to your website. This is also a great way to develop relationships within the press. The next time you need to send a press release, you'll have friends in the business where you can send it. Doing regular press releases can help drive your SEO.
While SEO is typically organic, one way to increase your SEO is with search engine marketing. Paid ads on Google, Facebook, and Instagram can help you target your customers more effectively and get your business on the first page of results when searching Google.
Technical SEO is another aspect of SEO that is awesome but is overlooked by DIY marketers. This technical aspect has nothing to do with what is seen on your page but can substantially impact its appearance in organic search results. Your website needs to load quickly and efficiently. The longer it takes to load, the more often visitors will abandon your site and move on to another site. This can negatively impact your SEO because your site will have a high bounce rate. Website speeds are constantly changing and improving, so keeping up with this aspect of your website is essential. A few ways to do this are optimizing image sizes and formats, "lazy" loading pages, and deprioritizing third-party code.
Technical SEO also looks at the mobile-friendliness of your website. Amateur developers often only look at your site's desktop version, but most of the Internet is now driven by mobile traffic. The more mobile-friendly your blog or article is, the more likely it is to be read. Two easy ways to improve your technical SEO are to ensure you do not have duplicate content on your website. This is super simple. Next, ensure every page on your website has unique H1 and metadata tags.
Finally, don't confuse your robot overlords. If your website repeatedly focuses on specific keywords, AI and indexing bots need help understanding your site. If crawlers, indexing bots, and AI compare multiple blogs on your site, they won't be able to rank just one as a comprehensive authority on that topic. It's better to include just one or two blogs about a specific topic rather than multiple blogs about the same topic.
Local SEO is the last type of SEO, but it's one of the most important. Local SEO deals with rankings in a specific state, city, town, or ZIP Code. You want to increase your presence within a community, especially if you have a brick-and-mortar business. Local SEO is a great way to build links to local companies so that when people search for "X business near me," your business turns up in the listings. Local SCO listings are ultimately tied to your Google My Business profile. Google has specific guidelines and rules to be followed when optimizing your profile because services will be suggested based on proximity, reviews, business hours, services rendered, and more.
Search engine optimization is a task that requires your full attention and really should be handled by a professional marketer. It can be a little tricky for beginners to understand SEO, especially technical SEO, so it is recommended that you hire a digital marketing agency to help your company grow online and achieve an authoritative presence and a well-ranked online presence.
Here are some key ways to optimize your SEO and ensure you are ranking in Google searches:
Quality Content - Publishing the highest quality content possible on your website is crucial since Google places a lot of emphasis on the websites and web pages that best address users' needs. For the best possible SEO, customers need to be delighted by your site, understand the focus of your site better, and blog content should also be enjoyable and easy to read. Is the searcher happy with what they found on your page? GA4 measures this by engagement and time spent on your site rather than just clicks.
User Interface - Making an interface that is simple to use: Google prioritizes its user's experiences over those clicks and likes and ranks contentment based on your user's behavior on your site. You must ensure your website is straightforward, intuitive, logical, and accessible.
Social Links and Backlinking - Social media link sharing and linking your content across other sites and platforms helps Google see that this content is valuable to people. Sharing links to your site on social media is one way to increase website traffic.
Updating your Code - HTML optimization entails checking your website's coding regularly for anything that can cause it to slow. You'll need to schedule monthly or quarterly reviews to scan through your site for any outdated code or security threats.
Some marketers try to figure out ways to trick Google's algorithm so that their site will rank higher and faster. This might work in the short term, but sites can end up gated, downlisted, or even blacklisted if users consistently click on your site but immediately navigate away or bounce to another more relevant site. Avoid spammy links, overuse of keywords, use of entirely too many images, hidden text or links, purchasing links on other sites (back linking) and link exchanging, paid false reviews, bot written content, plagiarized text, and clickbait. These will not only harm your site in the long term but can also ruin your business reputation or even be a crime.
Don't just hire any marketing agency to handle your SEO. Interview several prospects, listen to what they offer, and ask for examples of sites they have worked on. With some due diligence, you'll be able to find a marketer that fits your needs, understands SEO, uses reputable methods to increase your site's organic reach, and help you be well on your way to hosting an authoritative website that grows your business reach.
Reach out to schedule a discovery call and see how we can improve your site's SEO.
