We went back and forth on how to name this post… “An Introduction to SEO”, “A Beginner’s Guide to SEO”, “SEO Basics”, “Your SEO Crash Course”. We realized it really didn’t matter, as long as we make sure this one is totally for the beginners in our crew.
You’ve likely heard about SEO and know you need it, but you’re not quite sure how to get started. We’ve got you covered. You’ll leave here knowing what SEO is, what you need to update on your site to optimize it and how to tell if what you’ve done is working.
Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. And search engine optimization can be both a noun and a verb. It is a marketing strategy, but it requires some action for the strategy to work. When we tell our clients they need SEO we are telling them that they should implement strategy-based tactics that will help them:
- increase the visibility of their website online: if no one can find you when they’re searching, no one will be aware of your brand or services
- increase organic traffic to their website: a website without traffic can’t convert interested clients into paying clients
SEO Essentials
When you’re first getting started with SEO there are key factors that will be essential for your success:
- An SEO Strategy – You’ve got to plan your work and work your plan. If you’re implementing SEO there must be a strategy behind your project. Your number one goal should be to serve your target audience. Once you determine where their needs meet your services, you can create a strategy to address SEO.
- An XML Sitemap – An XML sitemap will include a list of all the pages on your site that you would like search engines to index and show in search results. You can submit your sitemap to search engines to alert them about what pages to crawl on your site.
- Quality Content – Google wants to provide the best results for their users. The best result is going to be the most useful. Your job is to make sure your content is useful for your target audience. No one knows your business and services like you do. Use your content to establish your business as a thought-leader of your industry.
- Optimized Meta Tags – Meta tags help search engines understand the content of each page on your site. You want to make sure you have title tags, heading tags and meta descriptions that include relevant keywords about the content on the page.
- A Healthy Website – A healthy website is structured well, easy to use, works well on mobile, and is fast and secure. Search engines like to index healthy websites because they are providing a safe and useful result for users. Having an unsecure website that’s difficult to use or slow really decreases your chances to show up in search.
Does SEO Really Work? How Do You Know?
SEO will work as much as you do! You’ll need to invest time into optimizing your site to improve usability on mobile, to make sure your meta tags are optimized, to improve the user experience of your pages, to consistently add new content, and you’ll need to research the needs of your target audience, among other things. SEO takes time. It’s more of a “slow and steady wins the race” digital marketing tactic. There are a number of factors that influence how and when search engines index and show your websites to searchers and SEO specialists have no control over changes to Google’s algorithm.
Because of the time and resources it takes to implement SEO, it’s very important for you to consistently track your website’s search performance and metrics. We recommend using Google Analytics & Google Search Console. Both are free tools that will provide you with immensely helpful information:
- Google Analytics will provide you with metrics about your website traffic and visitors. You will be able to see the different types of traffic coming to your site, how visitors move through your site, what pages receive the most traffic, what actions visitors take on the site and more.
- Google Search Console will reveal errors on your site that may be affecting if and when your pages are crawled. Additionally, you will be able to see a sampling of what queries/search phrases people are typing into Google that bring up your pages in search results.
If the info we’ve shared is a bit overwhelming or you just don’t have the time to figure out an SEO strategy while you also grow your business, it may be time to figure out if you should hire an SEO specialist. We would love to help you craft a strategy and get started with SEO. Contact us to get started.
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