SEO, Why Knowing What This Means Will Help Your Business.
I meet with clients all the time and I’m surprised by how many do not know what SEO stands for or if they do know it stands for what SEO actually is and why is it so important to the growth of their website. I always say “I can build you a great website but its not going to do you any good if people can’t find it.” With today’s online marketplace becoming more and more crowded understanding how to get people to your website is just as important as having one. Having at least a brief understanding of SEO can go a long way. Many people overlook the importance of SEO which gives companies that do understand it an edge in the marketplace.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
So what is Search Engine Optimization? It’s a marketing discipline focusing on improving visibility in the organic search results on search engines like google and bing or Yahoo. To put it more simply its the task of making sure your website is structured in a way that search engines understand.
When people want to look for for a service or want to buy a product they do know open the phone book anymore. They go to Google or similar search engine to seek out what they are looking for. This search might be something very generic or very specific and the more you can position yourself to show up for both those generic and specific types of search the better chances you have of winning new customers.
Google and other search engines have rules on how they would like your site to be set up to help them best list your website to people that are a good match. On top of that, these rules are changing all the time. This makes the job of SEO professional very tough because they are always having to adapt to the latest Google updates to ensure clients websites are in compliance with the latest search giant’s updates.
Your website has a score. Google gives your site a overall score based on things like load time, proper markup, relevant information, site history, etc. By improving these things that Google scores you on is going to help your SEO efforts.
You can track your SEO results by setting up Google Analytics. It’s free and an extremely powerful tool to tell you what is happening with your site, where your customers are coming from and their behavior and in historical order. This is usable data to help ensure you are moving in the right direction with all your marketing and SEO efforts.
Social Media helps with SEO. Google sees what is happening on the web. And it rewards companies that have up to date valuable content. So if you are posting regularly to your blog, promoting that on social media and doing that on a consistent basis that is going to be a positive mark on your site.
Keyword ranking reporting. Having a set up keywords you are trying to rank well for can be tracked with software from different 3rd parties. Getting to the page 1 of Google for certain keywords can be a challenge and once you are there you want to make sure if you drop you can react to it and bounce back to your prime position. Getting to page one of Google doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time. Well actually you can. It’s called Google Pay Per Click advertising and I will leave that for another blog post.
Here is a great article from MOZ which is a must read. https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
If you would like to get an SEO audit from Pure Design Group, just shoot us an email and we can give you an SEO report card to see what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong and what steps you need to take to improve your SEO results. Get a free SEO audit