Most people have heard the phrase Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short), but what does it actually mean? By definition, it’s all the things that go into improving a website’s standing when it comes to search engine results – optimizing search engine results. For example, if you take the right SEO steps for your website, it might appear toward the top of the list of results when someone searches for it on Google or another search engine. Without any SEO, your website might not even appear on the first page of results, making it a lot less likely that potential customer’s will find your business.
SEO is made up of many factors that go into an ever-changing algorithm created by Google or other search engines. It’s like a question with several variables, and depending on how good your website’s SEO is, it will be ranked alongside other similar websites. Your SEO rank will determine your position in search results.
But what do you need to know for your business? You need to know that 64% of marketers and 63% of brands spend time specifically working to build and improve their SEO. It’s the best way to make sure your site ranks high enough in search engines like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo to be noticed by customers. SEO is so vital that it has been referred to as “Google’s love language.”
The Google algorithm changes frequently, but some aspects have remained important on an ongoing basis, including but not limited to:
Keywords: If someone is looking for dog treats, they may search for “where to buy dog treats in Atlanta”. Google takes what someone types in their search bar, and compares that to keywords you attached to your website. If your website has no keywords, your business likely won’t show up in their search result. If you’ve set your keywords to include “dog treats” and “Atlanta”, then that potential customer will have a much better chance at finding your company in their search results.
Relevance: Continuing with the dog treat example, Google looks at your keywords, and what else was typed into the search bar, and then uses machine-learning data to look through your website to see if there’s relevant information. Do your individual web pages include the term “dog treats” in headers and body text? Does your website offer further information related to dog treats such as ingredients list, pictures of dog treats, etc? Is there new information (this could be updated page content or new blogs) added to your website on a regular basis related to dog treats?
Content Quality: Not only do search engines look for relevant content, they also look for quality content. This is determined through a complex set of variables, including things like how reliable the source is, how many other people visited your website after searching for something similar, and how much spam or not-useful content is on your website? An example of something Google might look for is repeat content. A lot of online marketing companies reuse the same blog post for several different websites in the same industry, but Google’s algorithm keeps track of where the blog was posted first, and every other website with copy-pasted content will be marked as less reliable and less quality. This is why custom, meaningful, and useful content is so important on a website.
To get a better understanding of SEO for your website or social media page, let’s take a closer look at keywords. Let's say you sell dog treats. You might want to optimize the following list of keywords:
Dog
Dog treats
Treat
Pet treats
Pet
House pet
But some words you may not have thought about are also crucial to making sure your ranking goes up. Remember, we want to appear first on anyone’s Google or Bing search. Here are some other great search terms for the dog treat business example:
Biscuit
Dog biscuits
Bone
Chew toy
Puppy
Puppy treats
Puppy training
Organic dog treats
With SEO we always have to expand our thinking. If your website is the store on the corner, think of SEO terms as the signs in the window, the TV ads, and the airplane banner all rolled into one. The more ways you can reach your audience, the better. It all improves your website traffic and exposure to potential customers, and that’s what Hello Human Media is here to do.
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