What Is SEO?
Now that you have a website, you may be asking yourself:
“Why am I not ranking in Google yet?”
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is where you take steps to help your website rank higher in search engines. That’s right, there are things that you can do to to influence where Google ranks you! We all know that having a website doesn’t mean much if people can’t find you, so our goal is to make sure that you get the most out of your time and money.
On-Site SEO
On-Site SEO has to do with everything on your actual website. This ranges from the pictures and written content to all of those fancy title/meta tags. You are going to want to implement those keywords you selected earlier throughout your site.
The search engines want to see that you are able to provide a lot of information on what you specialize in. Whether it’s a business or informational blog, content is key! The more text you have describing what it is that you do, the more of an authority figure you will appear to be to the search engines.
A tip for On-Site optimization is to place all of your most important keywords towards the top of your page. This will show search engines that it is of high importance, especially if it is a toolbar link. However, make sure that you page looks natural. Search Engines check to see if it looks “customer friendly”, so it is extremely important not to over-optimize (or keyword stuff) your pages.
Off-Site SEO
Wouldn’t you be more likely to trust a new doctor that a friend referred than one that you had never heard anything about? Well this idea can be applied to getting your website to rank.
Google and the other search engines are much more likely to trust and rank your website if you have lots of other people “referring” you.
Off-Site SEO has to do with other websites connecting back to your site. These are tactics like backlinks, directory citations and social media connections. This is extremely important to the search engines because it shows that people are actually looking/talking about your website.
It is important for these connections to be relevant and of high authority. Relevancy means that it actual relates to your website and the keywords you are looking to target. This, along with high authority really help show search engines that you are a reputable website to visit.
Now What?
SEO is extremely important for making your website visible to the world, but it can also be overwhelming.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help!
Now that you know what SEO is, we are going to talk about all of the different things you can do for your website to help it rank!