What is SEO and How Does it Help Your Business?
If your business is on the internet, chances are, you’ve heard of SEO. You might have heard it’s something your website needs, and you may even know it has something to do with Google.
But what is SEO exactly? How does it help your business, and what can you do to make the most of an SEO strategy?
If you’re just getting started with SEO, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s a brief overview of search engine optimization that’s perfect for those who want to start taking advantage of SEO strategies right away.
A Brief Explanation of SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It includes any strategy or practice that is designed to improve the ranking of a website on search engines, like Google.
The ultimate goal of increasing the SEO of a webpage is to increase organic traffic to a website. It includes everyone who types a query into the search bar of a search engine, then clicks on one of the results that pop up on the results page.
That’s in contrast to paid traffic that arrives to your website through the use of paid ads, or direct traffic that involves visitors typing your web address into the search bar.
How SEO Can Help Your Business
In some ways, SEO is a great equalizer. When strategies are deployed successfully, any business of any size can increase the visibility of their brand and increase traffic to their website without paying for ads.
The trick is to use a combination of strategies that tick as many of the boxes on Google’s algorithm as possible. When you do, you’ll find your website rises in the rankings.
Why does it matter if you rise in the rankings?
Imagine you’re searching for something on Google. You type your query into the search bar, hit enter, and a list of results pops up on your screen. How far down the page do you scroll before clicking on a link? How often do you click through to the second page of results?
Almost everyone clicks on a result on the first page, with over 25 percent of people clicking on the first result and a measly 2.5 percent of visitors clicking on the tenth result.
By using SEO tactics, you can move your website up in the rankings, and the higher up in the rankings you go, the more clicks you will get. It’s one strategy that can increase leads and greatly impact the success of your business. After all, more visitors to your website means more chances to gain new customers!
Tips For Using SEO to Your Advantage
Knowing how SEO works and how it can impact your business is a good start, but if you want to take advantage of everything search engine optimization has to offer, you have to know what strategies to try.
Here are a few to get you started:
- Quality content
- Keywords, and where to use them
- Link building
- HTML details
Quality content
If you do nothing else on your website, at least make sure you invest in some great content.
It’s Google’s job to provide searchers with the best results for their query. It’s not necessarily the fastest answer, the answer from a famous brand, or an answer from the most established website that pops up on the search results page. It’s the result that matches the user’s query the best.
Try to understand user intent when conducting a search and provide the best content to address their query. Continually add great content to your site and it’s only a matter of time before you climb up in the rankings.
Keywords, and where to use them
Many SEO strategies focus on keywords—for good reason. When the keyword you choose aligns with the user’s intent during a search, your chances of landing on the first results page increases.
Choosing the right keywords is important, but so is where you put them. Instances of your keyword should occur throughout the content and in places like:
- The title
- At least one heading
- The first and last paragraph
HTML details
Trying to figure out HTML sounds like something that’s reserved for tech experts.
It doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to understand code in order to make it work for you.
HTML is basically just the road signs that point to your site. You can make sure your road signs are accurate by using your keyword in things like the:
- URL slug in the search bar
- Title tag that is displayed on the search results page
- Alt text that describes images on the webpage
- Subheadings, like H1s and H2s
- Meta description that is no longer than 160 characters
Link building
Link building can be easy or difficult, depending on whether you’re building internal links or backlinking.
Let’s talk about easy linking first.
Your content should include links to other pages on your website, as well as links that point to other pages with a high domain authority. It creates a coherent web of interrelated topics that help Google discern exactly what your website is about. The more confident the bots are about what’s on your site, the better it will rank.
Backlinks are harder. It involves other people linking to your website from theirs. It usually requires building a reputation so others want to link back to your site, among other strategies.
A Word of Caution
Dealing with SEO can be overwhelming, especially if you’re just getting started. It can be tempting to take shortcuts to save time.
Stick with the white hat SEO strategies on this list. It’s true that it takes a lot longer, but once you finally make it, you’ve really made it! You will enjoy the fruits of your labor over the long-run.
Black hat strategies, like duplicating content, using keywords in invisible text, and poor linking practices from bad link building companies, may boost your SEO in the short run, but eventually, Google will penalize you, and your site will fall in the rankings.
If your brain is swimming with SEO possibilities and you want to make sure you use the right strategies the right way, contact Sierra Productions. We can put content first on your website, integrating the right SEO techniques along the way, so you can see your site rise in the ranks!
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