Search Engine Optimization… What is SEO?
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If you have been thinking about your business website and how to have an effective web presence, you have likely encountered the term SEO. But, what does that mean and more importantly, what does it mean for your business?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the term that is used to refer to a marketing discipline designed to grow the organic (unpaid) traffic to your business website. Once your business website is launched, there are many ways to direct traffic to your site. According to a study conducted by Search Engine Watch, the top five results of any search result in over 67% of the clicks. Ranking high in search results is important!
When a website is well structured and optimized for discoverability, it will begin to appear in search engine results naturally. There are hundreds of factors that influence Google and other search engines and allow your website to be ranked over other, similar sites. Understanding the most important components of a discoverable website and monopolizing on them is essential for a healthy and effective web presence.
1. Quality User Experience
There are many ways to optimize your website to provide the best user experience. Consider the last time that you visited a website looking for information. Ask yourself these questions about that experience:
- Was the site easy to navigate?
- Were you able to easily search the site?
- Was there content that improved the experience?
- Was your objective for visiting the site achieved?
- Did the website direct you to additional, useful information?
- Did the website load quickly?
These are the same questions that your visitors will ask themselves while they are exploring your website. Placing yourself in the position of your target audience and structuring a website to provide a seamless experience is recognized by search engines and will influence your websites ranking.
2. High Quality Content
Long gone are the days of stuffing a website with keywords in order to increase traffic. Today, well structured, meaningful content is essential to cultivating website traffic. There are several types of content and websites that have a mix of content are favored over sites that are sparse with content.
- Page Content. Each individual page of your business website should have a minimum of 250 words explaining the purpose of the page and providing useful information to the user.
- Blog Posts. Posting frequent blog posts provides an opportunity to stay in touch with your audience and provide updated information. Centering blog posts around specific topics increases discoverability.
- Evergreen Content. A term that is becoming increasingly discussed, evergreen content is thoughtful, long form content that helps to establish the author as an industry leader. Evergreen content is typically published in the form of a blog, white paper, or ebook and is readily accessible from the website.
- Product Descriptions. eCommerce sites have a unique opportunity to utilize product descriptions as a form of high quality content. Although it may be tempting, resist the urge to use standard product descriptions and instead, write unique descriptions for maximum search engine exposure.
- Meta Descriptions. Although meta content is almost always invisible to the user, search engines rely on high quality meta descriptions to make sense of the parts of your website. Making full use of behind the scenes meta content will produce a noticeable increase in website traffic.
When developing any of these types of content, it is important to product well structured sentences. There is no such thing as too much content, so keep writing.
3. Social Media Authority
Linking social media accounts to your website is important way for Google and other search engines to verify that your business is well established. Do not be afraid of being present on all relevant social channels. Use the opportunity to interact with customers and use social platforms as a channel for providing customer service. There are several ways to take advantage of social media to increase your website SEO. The first step is to create accounts and link them to your website. A few platforms to consider are:
- Snapchat
- Vimeo
- YouTube
SEO is a very broad term and encompasses a range of marketing techniques. Understanding the most important keys to being discovered can be tricky. When in doubt, rely on a professional for help with optimizing your site and GET FOUND!
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