You have a product, service or information that you want to make available to a wider audience or you want to provide an online source for your ‘store’. You want to create a website to draw extra customers and increase your availability. Well done, you already know that being online is a huge draw for customers and information seekers.
Most business owners find difficulty in determining the tools they will use in facing digital marketing campaign. They tend to confuse themselves to know which particular sources would work well with their kind of business and which will bring them successful results. Besides, those owning small and medium enterprises have a tendency to choose one that will cost them the least. They are not like the big companies which can resort to the best options.
With this, many like to use search engine optimization option, with a belief that it has a “free” price tag attached to it. Unless you have a well-established business, you will see little or no business increase from the launch of your website without at least a basic understanding of SEO facts.
Do you want to know the worth of SEO? Let’s continue.
Why use SEO?
The purpose of search engine optimization is to assist people seeking you (or your product) to find you. The fact is if you have a client-base, to begin with, they are more likely to search your web/store name in Google than the product they seek and you will score high on the search result page. However, if you have a product, but no client-base you want new users to find you by searching terms related to your product or information.If you don’t build your website with customers and search engines in mind, you will see no benefit from launching it. Search Engine Optimization is a marketing strategy, so if you don’t want people to find your website, ignoring the guidelines won’t hurt you. However, if you want people to find you, you must understand the basic marketing rules and guidelines that it lays out.
Do your research.
You must be doing it right because here you are, researching Search Engine Optimization. The first rule is good research. You need to understand the general search terms used for what you provide. In addition, you need to research the aims you have and how they correspond with the audience you attract.If you make furniture or carved sculptures, there is no point using ‘lumber’ and ‘reclaimed wood’ as your keywords if your audience wants to buy the raw wood and not your handcrafted items.
Research your keywords. The ones you will gain better search returns for are those with high search volume (lots of people search for it) and low competition (doesn’t have as many search results). Finding the right balance will improve your showing on search engine results.
Keywords are still the basis on which search engines find your website. The spiders that crawl the web, looking for new content, search out and index text, as they can’t reference video, picture or audio data.
If your website will compete with large international businesses, you will need to narrow your search terms and that means looking at long tail keywords, the combination of less popular search terms that return a lower number of results.
Grow Your SEO
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infographic courtesy of I Candy Graphics.
Time to Build (or rebuild) Your Website with SEO Techniques
All on-page (things under your website) SEO facts refer to two things, content and structure.
Content
Content means anything you put on your website and you can break it down into several sub-categories. You need to be aware that every article, product or link is relevant and optimized for the maximum return on the keywords searched on Google. In addition, you also need to be aware that over use and irrelevance will result in poor user experience and Google will knock you back down the results pages.In any article or blog you post, you should write for human views first and then optimize them for the search engines. Articles written for search engines first lack originality, even able to grasp attention, and tend to be boring, not what you want your customers to experience when they visit your website.
Another facet of Search Engine Optimization is that to maintain interest, the content has to be dynamic, original and fresh. Keeping your web pages current is not just a case of keeping your users coming back for more. The more often you add content, the more often the spiders come back to index the new content and links. When optimizing your content, ensure you use keywords in appropriate places. Headings and subheadings are the best places to position your keywords.
Internal links – Links between your articles according to relevance will improve your searchable data and add another layer of links between pages. Search engines don’t rank complete websites. They rank pages. If your page has a link to another relevant page on your website, it will follow that path and rank that page on Google.
Product lists – If you have a list of products to sell, ensure you have well optimized titles and descriptions. You have only a small amount of space to ensure keyword optimization. Links between related products and recommendations for combining them will help users navigate through your products and will gain ranking with the search engines.
Structure
The structure of your website is very important, not only for users’ convenience, but also for the ease of search engines to index it. When spiders crawl the web, they will navigate through linked (manually or not) pages. Ensuring that navigation around your website is optimized will assist both the users who visit and the spiders that drive the search engines. You now have a well-designed and optimized website. The search engines can effectively search and index your website. Now you need the rest of the web to know.Now Link to the Rest of the Web
Now you need to get your wonderful website linked to the rest of the web. It is a fact that while search bots can only index text, the position of your website on a search result page depends on far more than just keywords. Links to and from your website will affect your reputation and popularity. Spiders and crawlers can index these links and rank your page accordingly.Links In
Social Media – Social media is a major tool in garnering links to your web business, linking a website to a Facebook page gives you access to a whole range of clients that you would not get through search engines alone. Using social media also opens up new advertising channels. Social media work best if you also have a personal profile because you can leverage your personal contacts as a basis for expanding your followers. In addition, personal posts show up better than business posts on news feeds, so if you share your business posts on your personal page, it will translate across your friends’ news feeds.Classified Listings – If you operate in a specific locality, submitting your business to classified sites, such as Yellow Pages or Yelp will increase the number of external links out there on the web that direct traffic back to your website. In addition, classified listings with a website address tend to convert to sales better because of the amount of information available.
Links out
Authority pages - Linking out from your website to authority pages like Wikipedia, Wiki-how etc. give users a reference for your claims and bestows a certain amount of authority on your website because it shows well-researched content. Links from your site are not as powerful as links in but they play their part in increasing your website reputation.Shared content & Partnerships - Guest posts and blogs from compatible partner sites are beneficial to both parties. Sharing contents and inviting participation puts your name and business out into a new group audience. When you blog for them and link back to your website, you get their followers and the same happens in reverse when they blog for you.
The implementation of SEO facts and techniques is not about the instantaneous arrival at the top of Google Page 1. Yes, that is where you want to be, but you need to be there for the right reasons. Using the information above will help you get closer to that spot. SEO Search engine optimization gives you the tools to reach your audience in ways other than a search engine result. However, the result of these external links is to increase your reputation and popularity, which will drive you toward the top of the search engine results page.
Achieving top ranking is a responsibility, as well as the goal. Google and the other search engines are constantly upgrading and changing their search algorithms to give their users the best possible experience. That means getting the best and most relevant returns from their searches.
About author:
Eve Haugen has been a freelance writer for a long while. Her passion in writing is her main drive in crafting articles that are engaging, informative, and meaningful. Her partnership with QuickSEOResult has given her a whole new opportunity to take writing to a whole new level.
