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Imagine going fishing without any bait and expecting to catch a boatload of fish. Sounds crazy right? Having a great site without SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and still expecting a boatload of potential customers is just as crazy.
You’ve probably heard SEO mentioned a hundred times. But do you really know how SEO works? Even if you have a basic understanding of what it entails, you may still not have a solid grasp on this complex and multifaceted process. Unfortunately, SEO is a fairly complex process with many factors that determine it’s success.
Having a robust SEO strategy is crucial to making your website and business more visible to consumers that are not looking for you by name.
It’s also a valuable tool for brand awareness, building relationships with prospects, and positioning yourself as an authoritative and trustworthy expert in your field. So, here's everything you need to know about SEO and why it’s vital to succeed in today’s digital world.
SEO Essentials
Keywords
One of the first, and easiest SEO tactics are keywords. Keywords must be well-researched and carefully chosen in your content in order to be effective.
Keywords are words and phrases that prospects use to find online content, and that brands can then use to connect with prospects who are looking for their products and services.
When undertaking the key steps of keyword research, it’s important to look for ones that have high search rates and low competition. Your keywords should also try to be as specific and targeted as possible. For example, “Boston Restaurants” will bring up thousands of results. Even, “Italian Restaurants Boston” will produces pages of results. Instead try being even more geographically focused “North End Boston Italian Restaurant”.
Be sure to use keywords to optimize all your page titles, URLs, blog titles, and other on-page SEO elements.
Content
Content is a vital part of SEO because it’s the vehicle you use to reach and engage audiences. Knowing your angle and crafting content that fits is essential. In fact, you may have found this page because of content related SEO!
For instance, if you owned a pet store and wanted to increase your visibility, you might publish a series of blogs about choosing the right breed of dog, dog training tips, and more. When a person who wanted to know about various breeds of dogs, your blog would come up, and you'd be able to build a relationship with that prospect by providing valuable information. The idea is that when the time came for that prospect to buy a dog, for instance, you’d be the first pet store that came to mind.
Today’s content must be educational, but also interesting, relevant, and shareable. Content comes in a variety of forms, including:
Web page content
Videos
Blogs
Infographics
Podcasts
How-to guides
Whitepapers and e-books
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO involves external optimization practices that happen away from your site rather than on it.
The main technique used for off-page SEO is backlink building since quality backlinks to your site from external sites tell search engines that your site is valuable and high-quality which helps to build authority.
There are many tactics to backlink building, and some of the current best practices include guest blogging, creating lots of infographics that will be highly shared, and using influencer marketing in your content.
Visibility and Rankings
One of the most important functions of SEO is increasing visibility, which means making it easier for prospects to find you when they search for something you have to offer. Visibility is directly related to your ranking.
The higher you rank on a search engine result page (SERP), the more likely prospects will see you and click through to your site, so it’s key to increase your organic page ranking. The more effective your SEO efforts, the higher your ranking and the better your visibility, which is especially important when you consider that a quarter of web users never click past the first SERP.
Creating a Better Visitor Experience
Another reason SEO is critical is because all the time you put into generating great content and on-page SEO optimization improves the usability of your site. This creates a seamless and positive customer experience.
For instance, when you take steps to make your site responsive, it will make it usable for all your mobile visitors as well as people who visit from a laptop or desktop. Similarly, by increasing your page load speed, you'll reduce your bounce rate and encourage visitors to spend longer on your site. Consumers expect a page to load as quickly as possible with a limit on loading to not creep past three seconds! The longer the load time, the higher the bounce rate and the lower your conversions.
As you can see there are many layers to a successful SEO campaign. That’s why WixSpace is here to help! We would be happy to review your site and offer our suggestions for SEO tactics that will help you bring more fish, I mean customers, into your boat!
