Think about the process you go through when you want to buy something or hire a company. You likely begin by googling that product or service. For example, if you are looking to hire a company to paint your house, you’d likely begin by googling “home painters near me”. Your customers do the same thing. No matter what product/service you may offer, customers often have to search for your industry online to find your company. To help make sure your company is one of the top search results when customers turn to Google, your website must have a strong SEO.
Why Should You Care About SEO?
Improving SEO should be a top focus for most companies because it will help bring new traffic to your website which can lead to new sales. Instead of relying on paying for social ads to bring potential customers to your site, a strong SEO will put your website near the top of a search engine results page, leading to more un-paid visits. Therefore, strong SEO not only brings in new potential customers, but it can also save you money when it comes to spending on social advertising.
Improving your SEO
So how can you go about improving your website’s SEO? Here are a few, key strategies you can start implementing:
Title Tag
The title tag is the title of your website that appears on a search engine result page. Your title tag should be 70 characters or less and should include the name of your company plus a few keywords. You want your title tag to clearly and concisely show the search engine and possible visitor what your website is offering.
Meta Description
On a search engine result page, the meta description is the 1-2 sentences that appear underneath the title tag. The meta description should provide slightly more context on what your page Is offering and include a few more keywords.
Internal Links
When search engines are determining where to place you on their results page, what they’re really doing is trying to find out as much as possible about your website. They are trying to understand the quality of the structure and content of your website to determine whether your website is what googlers are looking for. To help make it easy for search engines to learn more about your website, it is great to use internal links to link to other content and information.
Quality Content
Content is king when it comes to SEO. By frequently posting relevant, informative and updated content you will increase the likelihood of users coming to your page and therefore improve your SEO.
Backlinks
Backlinks are when another website references your company’s site by posting a direct link to your product page/blog/home page etc. In doing so, search engines determine that your website is trustworthy and publishes quality content and will, therefore, improve your ranking. Although backlinks are a great way to improve SEO, they are not something you can control – you cannot force influencers or other sites to link your website. Therefore, the best way to gain backlinks is by posting quality content and ensuring your website is user-friendly.
Don’t Over Optimize!
Based upon these recommendations, it’s easy to want to throw keywords all over your website and push influencers to promote you. However, there is such a thing as over-optimizing your SEO. Search engines will look out for websites who are blatantly over-using keywords and consequently, lower their SEO ranking. When working on your website’s SEO it is better to strategically use a few, important keywords and create a great user experience!
If you’d like some more help improving your website’s SEO or have further questions on digital marketing, reach out to info@sidepart.com for a FREE consultation!
References
What is SEO and How Does It Work? [Here’s the Answer]. (2019, July 9). Retrieved from https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/what-is-seo-and-how-it-works/.
