So, you keep hearing that SEO is so important to your business, and you find yourself asking, “What is SEO?”
Simply put, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of taking a web page built by humans & making it easily consumable for both other humans and search engines. Search engines like Google® use a methodical, automated computer program that scans web pages. These Web crawlers, (or spider, ant, automatic indexer, bot, web robot – whatever you want to call them) use complex algorithms to process data, calculate page rank and determine site quality.
And why is that important to your business again?
A majority of economic activity both ONLINE AND OFFLINE begins with an Internet Search:
- 1st few results get most visibility & traffic
- Top listing instills trust in a company’s site
- So much traffic to so few listings means financial incentives for search ranking
Now the real question,
How do I optimize my site and improve my my search engine rankings?
Tactics vary based on your business, your target audience, your marketing strategy and a host of other variable, but there are a few basics to keep in mind.
1. Refine your Content
Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking. Remember, SEO will be useless if customers don’t know what to do when they get there. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.
2. Leverage your Community
Content should be highly relevant to the search term that landed the user there. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you. Also, understand that social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like, Yelp, Facebook, Google+ etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
3. Measure your Success
Site Tracking helps identify keywords that customers are searching & refine content to match.