No matter what industry or sector your business is a part of, and no matter the product or service you offer, it’s likely most of your customers find you online. In other words, your goal is to drive loyal and potential customers to your website to buy your product, subscribe to your service, read your content, and hopefully return to purchase from you again.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an integral part of your website presence. It is the process of enhancing your web pages so they appear higher in search engine result pages and drive more organic or unpaid traffic to your website.
The higher your page ranks on sites like Google, Yahoo, or Bing, the more awareness there is around your brand, which leads to more buyers and more sales.
SEO is a common buzzword in marketing and PR strategy, but what does it mean and entail? The first aspect to know is how search engines like Google work. Before an audience can see a web page in a search result, Google crawls it, indexes it, and ranks it.
Crawling | Once Google, Bing, or Yahoo discover the page’s URL, it uses bots and spiders to explore your page and see what it includes.
Indexing | These bots closely examine the web page’s text, images, and other data, and then add it to the search engine’s massive index of web pages. Want to know what pages on your website have been indexed? Insert your URL in any search engine.
Ranking | The web page is then matched to the user’s searches and ranked in results based on hundreds of factors. Some of these factors are under your control, and you can influence your page’s ranking.
Control Your Rank
There are several ways to help search engines recognize your website as the best result for customer searches. These include, but are not limited to:
Keyword Research
SEO is all about predicting what your audiences might be searching for and then using those relevant search terms on your webpage. These words should be used in educational content (blogs), headings and subheads, and even URLs.
How do you find these keywords? Try entering search terms about your product or service in Google and see what its autocomplete feature displays. The “People also ask” section in Google search results is also a great place to pick up relevant terms.
Improving User Experience
It might be tempting to overuse these keywords in certain places, but if your content itself isn’t useful to your customers, search engines won’t find your content useful and the number of terms you use won’t matter. Plus, Google can tell if you’re overstuffing your page with keywords.
Focus first on creating content that is valuable to your audiences. What would they like to know? What should they know? How can your product/service make their lives easier? Create compelling headlines, use subheads, and avoid big blocks of text.
Features like page speed and mobile friendliness also help search engines rank your page higher.
Stand out with a Google Business Profile
If you type in “coffee shops” or “fast food” in Google, usually a map with several businesses appears in the search results. A Google Business Profile will allow your company to appear on that map when users search for your product or service.
The profile also allows you to showcase your product/service, confirm your business hours, and more.
For more information about SEO or for help on SEO services, contact us today.