SEO: What it is. What it Does.

If you have a website or are researching websites, you’re sure to have heard the term SEO bandied about quite a bit. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO techniques are used to improve the visibility and ranking of a website when people conduct a search on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Generally speaking, the higher on the search page that a website displays and the more frequently a page ap­pears in searches, the more visitors it will receive from search engine users. How optimal is it to appear on the first page of a search? Very. Up to 42% of search users click the top-ranking link, as few as 8% click the second-ranking link. Click-through rate (CTR) drops thereafter. Sixty-two percent of users click a link on the first page of search results, 23 percent go to the second page.

The drive to come up on the first page of a search — and in the first, second, or third place — is one determined by traffic and relevance and can be an expensive one. Most small businesses may not be able to justify the time and money spent to come first in search engines that continually change their algorithms, and to outrank simi­lar, larger companies with more traffic. However, there are some things you can do that will help.

First Steps

When optimizing a website, you must first consider how search engines work and what search engines are used more often by your target customer. Also, think about how people conduct a search. What actual search terms might they enter when searching for a business or ser­vice such as yours?

The next step is for you, or your website developer, to edit website content to increase its relevance to specific keywords and to be sure everything is properly coded to remove barriers that may prevent search engine “spiders” from crawling through and indexing your site. Since effective SEO often requires changes to the HTML source code of a website and to a website’s content, SEO tactics can, and should, be incorporated into web design and development.

Five Things You Can Do for Better SEO

1. Title Tags – Each page should have a unique, descriptive title tag. A description relative to the content on the page helps people who are searching for you, your product, or your services.

2. Content – Content is King. Unique, infor­mative, and relevant site content helps SEO. Use keywords within that content that you feel best describe your business and will be words customers will search for when look­ing for services that your business supplies.

3. Links – Build working links between the pages of your website and with other trusted websites. Ask business affiliates and other trusted businesses to link to your site as well. You should also use Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs to create links to your website and encourage followers to visit.

4. Keywords – When your website developer lists keywords in the HTML files of your pag­es, be sure that those same words appear with frequency in the content on your site.

5. Updates – Fresh content will bring search engine “spiders” back to index your site, and will bring your customers back as well, so update your site as frequently as possible. You may want to update some pages once or twice a month, and others less frequently. The more traffic you receive, the higher you will come up in searches.

Conclusion

SEO is a critical part of online business success. If your content is not recognized and ranked highly by search engines, people will not be able to find you and if they can’t find you, they won’t be able to interact with you. It is those relationships that eventually lead to greater success for you and your business.

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