What Is SEO?
Many Business owners, SME and Solopreneurs have trouble understanding what is SEO (search engine optimisation).
SEO is a form of marketing, and when implemented correctly can drive significant volume of ‘free’ targeted traffic to your website.
Essentially think of when you search for something yourself on google, bing or yahoo. The results you see on the web page are the results of SEO and paid advertising.
Did you know that the latest research shows that approximately 94% of people don’t go past page 1 of google. If your business is not appearing on page 1 of these search engines, then your missing out – whilst your competitors will be receiving fresh leads!
When you understand what is SEO then you’ll discover it’s a very powerful tool for local area and direct response marketing. An effective SEO campaign can boost your website’s search ranking and attract more visitors, which is perfect for local businesses trying to market to their local area, or even local businesses trying to attract a broader client base form around the globe.
So here are 8 tips to improve your Local SEO efforts.
1 – Start with your website’s content. It is one of the most important things when you are using SEO. Your content needs to be well-written, fresh, unique, a proper length (between 300 to 700 words per page) and contain your keywords. Correct grammar is extremely important. If you have quality content you will succeed in SEO.
2 – Blogging on your own website will increase traffic because it will be more visible to search engines as it also increase your sites content. When you start to rank higher on search engine results, more people will visit your website.
3 – On often overlooked quick fix are your sites images. It is important to optimise your sites images by including descriptive tags in each image link. Ensure your images are named so that the image name reflects the content of your page and not image. These tags replace images if the image display is disabled by website visitors. Search engines dig through and read the tags so ensure that they contain your vital keywords.
4 – Create a site map for your website and ensure you submit this to google, bing and yahoo. Sitemaps can help search engines classify the content on your site. A sitemap is also known as the navigation bar. This part of your web site will let search engines know how many pages your web site has and what each one contains. Even a small site can have a huge impact with a site map, in how a search engine will rank it.
5- Mobile Responsive website. With just over 50% of searches now made on mobile devices, nowadays more than ever your potential customers are using, desktop, tablets and mobiles to search the internet. Google values your site more if it is mobile optimised. If your site isn’t mobile optimised you need to act soon and get it changed or you will be penalised by google and will be missing out on this growing source of traffic .
6 – Get your site listed on other search directories associated with your products and services. Choose directories that contain high value links and legitimate sites, if you plan to use them. Don’t affiliate yourself with directories that have outdated information or poorly designed websites. Exercise caution when you chose connections.
7 – Try contributing to blogs associated with your products and services. Put links on their sites. Blog writers will allow you to leave your link on their page if your contribution is substantial and of value to their readers. Do not post your link on irrelevant blogs, or it will clog the value of their site, giving you a bad reputation. Being educated in your subject matter means your comments, including your links, will be accepted on a number of blogs.
8 – Create Backlinks. Write great content about your product or service and then request that a non-profit organisation or an educational website link to that content on your site. Search engines view back-links to reputable sources favourably, and they will reward your affiliation with them. Use high-quality content to attract reliable sources that may want to feature you. Provide useful and worthy content to the organisations.
Some Final words on What Is SEO
There are no 100% guarantees about SEO. Anyone promising guaranteed SEO ranking results should be be treated with caution, as they may cause your site more harm than good in the long run. Be warned. Understanding what is SEO is important so you can be safe from scammers promising the world.
Don’t expect search engine optimization to take effect overnight. When you don’t fully understand what is SEO then it is normal for you to expect to see results right away for your work, however, as you learn more about what is SEO you will begin to understand that creating a solid web presence requires hard work and consistent dedication. It is essential that you stick with it, even if you feel like results are not coming quickly enough.
In time, your commitment and hard work will reward you with your site climbing higher and higher in the search engine results.
Here are some more articles to help you better understand What is SEO, and how to use it to get higher organic rankings on your website.
How To Make Your Website a Silver Bullet That Attracts Your Ideal Customer
