A basic knowledge of SEO is essential to properly positioning your website. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is increasing and improving traffic that comes to your site from search engines. In other words, if Google likes your page and thinks users will find value in it, you’ll be higher up in search results. You may be thinking, “How can I possibly control something like that?”, but with the proper tools you most certainly can!
Keywords
To begin optimizing your site for search engines, you’ll have to decide what keywords or phrases you want to be associated with. Search engines want to make sure they’re sending users to the correct pages, and that’s where keywords come into play. Broad keywords with only one or two words will obviously be more competitive than longer, more specific keywords. Find keywords that accurately represent the content on your home page and your product offerings.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you own a pizza restaurant. Rather than focusing on the keyword “pizza”, try “Deep dish pizza in Detroit”. “Pizza” is a wildly competitive search term, so your site will fare better if you focus on a phrase specific to your business. Google Adwords Keyword Planner is a free tool, and a great way to get keyword ideas.
Onsite SEO
Onsite SEO is great, because you control it! Remember the keywords you chose earlier? Make sure you’re using those in your URL, meta tags, image tags, content, and internal linking. Having a blog that you actively update is worthwhile too. Make sure you focus on your chosen keywords in every one of your posts!
Offsite SEO
One of the biggest factors in determining your page rank is how many other quality pages contain links pointing to your page. This step can be time consuming, depending on your keywords. The most common techniques used in offsite SEO are internet directories, social media, and guest blogging. If you’re producing really good content, then people will start linking to your page just because they like it!
It’s worth mentioning here that Google knows all the “quick-fix SEO tricks”, and it doesn’t like them. Stuffing keywords onto your page unnaturally, buying links, and having an outdated site that diminishes the user experience will cause Google to push your page down in rankings, or even remove it entirely.
The world of SEO is huge, and can be confusing at times; however, when you have the right tools it doesn’t have to be. The experts at Studio 7 can help implement and manage your entire SEO strategy, and improve the performance of your website. Send us an email or give us a call- let’s get started!
