SEO, aka search engine optimization, is a huge and complex subject. SEO is a set of rules set forth by the search engines that must be applied to your website and web copy. If however, these rules and practices are not applied correctly, your site may never reach to first page of search or achieve top listing of search.
A higher search rank for your website means that your site will appear closer to the top of the list for search results. This will place you in front of more customers searching for your products or services. That’s the overall concept around SEO. Now, let’s move onto the complexities of SEO and top considerations.
Before you invest into SEO: The technical aspects of SEO and why it’s important
- The performance of your website will affect your overall standing in relation to competitors – Try running a G-Metrix test to analyze your site performance. If your site falls below an ‘A’, for instances, this will impact your SEO, or, search and find.
- Site load – The faster a site loads, and with all the images rendering quickly on a page, and no other significant technical problems, the better your site will perform. If however, you have bloated images, and it takes 2 or more seconds for your site images to load, and you have a slower site. Therefore, your site will get a lower score.
- The security of your site – if you don’t have SSL, or, secure socket layers – you know, the padlock on the top of the URL with https, your site is automatically deemed unsafe and will be demoted. Good luck being found if you don’t have SSL on your site.
- How content is used – The frequency and combination of keywords chosen for your web pages will impact the site overall authority and relevance.
- Search intent – If people click on an ad based on the title, but the content isn’t aligned with the web copy, that is bad for SEO, and you can receive ad penalties.
- If search intent (what a person is looking for in their search query, and hits the back arrow on the browser bar, this can cause a demotion of the website in SEO.
While anyone can learn and follow the rules of SEO, the tools to manage all the requirements are immense. To be truly competitive with SEO and rise to the top of search, professional and SEO management will help you accomplish your goals. Plus, it will keep your search growing in rank, month after month – to the audiences who need to find you. How much business can you handle? – Julie Gorham
Why we recommend a dedicated SEO Team with a local project manager
Search is a moving target because it based on the billions of searches happening in real time, 24-7. We can’t say for certain that every week your site will maintain authority and relevance for a specific key word or phrase.
Search queries dictate what is being searched. If there’s a new trend for a search word of phrase, your page could drop in ranking. What if a competitor is working just as hard as you, and serves up a bunch of new copy on similar topics, and they load the page with the correct key words and phrases? Your site may lose rank.
To accomplish effective SEO, it requires a lot of tools, and a lot of eyeball and hands to look at data, discuss strategies, develop new content, interject keywords and phrases, pushing it out to social where it matters, developing new landing pages and more. This is what good SEO requires. It’s very time-intensive but necessary to be competitive.
Busy CEO’s don’t have time to look at all this data. They need to trust experts to manage this specialized website practice, and a local project manager to liaise between the company and SEO team. If you have a content expert on your team – fantastic! This person is perfect to coordinate with an SEO team.
Effective SEO requires an individual who understands your business and sales strategies well, and a robust SEO team with big tools to consistently monitor, report, analyze and manage new content on a regular basis.
Effective SEO also requires a consistent budget and the investment is spread out throughout off-site and on-site actions. Each tactic has very specialized skillset and knowledge, like back linking, technical on-site SEO, directories, content strategy, keyword strategy and more.
The technical work onsite is specialized and required for effective search advertising. Without you are probably throwing money away due to low quality score and low-value content. This means you pay more for search ads, and get less results!
How can small businesses use SEO methods to succeed?
Small businesses are best served by:
- Work with a marketing professional to develop a communication strategy and apply the content tactics in your website copy. They can also work with and SEO team to ensure targets are met.
- Establish an SEO budget and stick with it! If you don’t know how to effectively budget, we can help. We have a free service for this called a FREE ADVERTISING ASSESSMENT. Fill it out, and we’ll make some recommendations.
- Engage an SEO Manager or hire the right SEO team who can prove results and show you examples of success.
- Utilize your marketing manager, or hire a marketing person to manage your SEO relationship and manage your content for web.
Content agencies and Expert SEO Teams know how to address all of these issues. With the ever-changing rules set for by the search engines, as well as advanced concepts that will impact your website and long-standing SEO, we advise getting professional support for your SEO efforts.
Other SEO and Search considerations, if you really want to geek out
So how does search engine optimization work on your website? The most advanced parts of SEO are very technical and frequently change.
Clean code and clear, correct “mark-up” is required by the search engines.
It’s true. Google in particular is trying to promote a robust, disability-friendly and future-device-friendly web. That translates to pristine code, and the need to “tag” every element on the page in a way that makes its significance obvious to blind robots. No matter how beautiful your site’s design or how clever your copy, if your site is running on subpar code you are likely being held back because of it. A remodel with correct semantic markup can cause a site to jump several rungs in the rankings.
Need more help with your SEO? Feel free to reach out.