Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process used to make your website rank higher on search engines like Google. The end goal of SEO is that your website gets noticed. I will attempt to keep it simple and explain some SEO basics in a nutshell.
SEO and Search Engines
There is a process by which Google and other search engines will rank your website. This is why knowing some SEO basics is relevant and worth understanding. So, when someone searches for example, “The best Mexican restaurants”, the aim is that your Mexican restaurant will be on the first or second page of the results. The better visibility your pages have in the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages), the more customers you will attract. With Google being the mainstream door to the Internet, I will focus on appealing to them.
Keywords and SEO
Keywords are what you type into a search engine to find what you are looking for. When doing SEO on your own page there is a place where you type in a word or a phrase as your keyword. This will help pull your site up on Google. If you do nothing else, choose your keywords wisely. It’s important to think about what someone might search for to find your website when choosing your keyword. For instance, “SEO Basics”. Next, you want to sprinkle your page with the keywords you choose but do not stuff it with them. Overuse of your keyword or phrase can be seen as spam.
Crawlability
Google uses a computer program called spider to crawl from site to site. Crawling is where Google sends out a slew of robots (aka bots, crawlers, or spiders) to find links on pages they know about to ones that have never seen before. However, certain things can keep Google’s spiders from seeing your pages. Google depends on internal and external links to crawl through your website. So, without them, your pages most often won’t get crawled.
Link Building
Link Building is the practice of getting other websites to link to pages on your website. According to Google’s Andrey Lipattsev, links are one of the top three ranking factors that Google uses. There is a direct correlation between the number of websites linking to a page and the amount of search traffic it receives from Google.
Fresh and Relevant Content
Creating content that is new and relevant can bring organic visibility, higher rankings, and much more traffic. Google’s algorithms are constantly changing in an effort to bring relevant and useful fast results. A simple way to do this is to have new blogs on a monthly if not weekly basis. Google recommends these five things to consider as you begin creating content:
- Useful and informative: ie: Store hours, contact information, or a menu.
- More valuable and useful than your competitors: Provide different perspectives that are of value. Think outside the box.
- Engaging: Add pictures of your products and staff. Offer comment boxes to engage with customers.
- High Quality: Your site should have content that is unique, specific, and high quality.
- Credible: Use your own original research, testimonials, and reviews.
Mobile-friendliness
According to Hitwise, over 58% of searches in Google come from mobile devices. When you don’t have a mobile-friendly website it hurts both your SEO and audiences’ perspective of your company. Performing mobile SEO allows users to have a better experience on any device. Web FX has found that people spend 70% of their Internet time on mobile devices. And 74% of users are more likely to return to a mobile-friendly website. Google provides a great mobile page testing tool. You simply type in the URL of your page and click the Test URL button. You will receive an analysis of what you can do to improve your mobile-friendless.
In Conclusion
There are many other technical strategies to creating a strong SEO for your website. But I wanted to give you some SEO basics in a nutshell. Although, I will say it is imperative to learn as much as possible when it comes to optimizing your website for organic visibility. I hope this helps!
