Search engine optimization refers to a set of processes that improve a website, helping it become more visible online. Having a terrific website doesn’t benefit a business if no one is finding it online. Potential customers are unlikely to find your business online if it’s buried beyond the first or second page of a Google search. By optimizing your website through both technical and non-technical processes, you can improve your rank with the search engines so that when customers search for the products and services you offer, they’ll witness your business earlier in their search results. To ensure that your target customers will find your business, you need SEO.
What the Heck Is SEO?
SEO, technical SEO, local SEO–what’s it all mean? It helps to think of search engine optimization, or SEO, as a broad umbrella term for many different tasks that help improve a website to make it more appealing to search engines as well as to potential customers. Google, the uncontested arbiter of all things SEO, has outlined what websites should be doing to get optimized–and stay optimized. Google will not feature unoptimized websites early in its search results.
Terms like technical SEO and local SEO refer to subtopics within the SEO spectrum. Technical SEO refers to the–you guessed it–the more technical tasks that SEO specialists employ to improve things like a website’s code and loading speed. Local SEO refers to measures that SEO experts take to ensure that a website is optimized for its local audience.
Why Do I Need SEO?
If you intend to market your business online–and why wouldn’t you–you need SEO. Search engine optimization is what drives organic traffic to your website. Roughly 68% of all online experiences begin with a search. Internet users might be searching for information or for products and services. Naturally, if you sell products or services, you want customers to find your business listing when they conduct a search on search engines such as Google or Bing. If your business is not listed on page one of Google search results, you’re definitely losing business to companies who are featured on that first page.
By taking the appropriate optimization measures (i.e. hiring an agency that specializes in Search engine optimization for website design and digital marketing), you can improve your ranking with the search engines, increase traffic to your website, improve your lead generation, and sell more of your products and services. It also helps you improve your business’s brand recognition.
SEO Marketing Basics
As a fundamental aspect of any digital marketing plan, Search engine optimization involves a series of elements that websites need in order to become optimized. When partnering with your digital marketing team, you’ll want to focus on the following basics:
Website Security and Accessibility
Google isn’t going to encourage its searchers to visit insecure websites or sites with poor accessibility. Establishing a secure and accessible website is a crucial aspect of an SEO plan.
Technical SEO
As we mentioned earlier, technical Search engine optimization refers to multiple technical tasks that improve a website. Your SEO guru will make sure that your site pages load quickly, for example. Sites with poor loading times are penalized by Google and other search engines. They’ll also improve your website code and structure, and make sure that all your links are working.
Check out my article here – on how to improve your website speed.
Optimized Content
Content refers to your site’s text-based material as well as videos, infographics, charts, etc…
High-quality content is a must to ensure search engine optimization. Your keyword-rich content helps your business demonstrate its expertise (within its industry), authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Google has designed algorithms that actually check for these content elements.
User Experience
An optimized website offers customers a positive user experience. If your site isn’t user friendly, rest assured–the search engines will know, and they won’t be keen to send traffic your way.
Mobile Friendly
Since increasing numbers of internet users use their mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) to access the internet, it’s essential that businesses create mobile-friendly websites. When developing your SEO plan, be sure that mobile Search engine optimization is part of it.
Core Web Vitals
Fortunately, Google has established a road map for improving your SEO. It’s a must to meet its Core Web Vitals to ensure that your website is optimized.
Tips for Creating Quality Content
To create quality content, you can rely on professional writers and content specialists for help. Your content should provide relevant information for your target customers. Naturally, you’ll need content to feature on your website pages, but additional content like blogs, product descriptions, videos, white papers, articles, social media posts, and podcasts will help you effectively market your business online.
Poorly crafted content can actually hurt your website, undermining its authority in your business sector. Google’s algorithms are highly sophisticated. These days, they cannot be fooled by poor content that simply has the right keywords. Aim to feature the best-quality content you can afford to support your SEO efforts.
Keyword Research
Keywords help you to accurately convey what your content is about. For example, if you sell tshirts online, you should conduct research to determine all the different keywords and keyword phrases that searchers might use when they search online for tshirts. By featuring these terms in your content, you can trigger the search engines to view your website as relevant for these searchers.
Remember, however, that keyword stuffing is a big misstep. Google’s algorithms can determine keyword stuffing and will penalize your website if it’s not pairing relevant keywords with high-quality content.
Checkout Googles free tool to reasearch keywords – https://ads.google.com/keyword
It’s free to use when sign up to google ads. Heres a tip, create a dummy ad to get access to this tool.
Where Do I Start?
The key to producing an SEO-friendly website is to partner with a digital marketing firm with proven Search engine optimization expertise. Let’s Build a Website specializes in website development and design. We help businesses and organizations build and manage websites that are SEO friendly and poised to support their marketing success.
