For small business owners that are either building their site for the first time or redesigning their current website, search engine optimization (SEO) can be intimidating.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Even if you don’t have a skilled in-house SEO team, you can still make some tweaks to improve your SEO strategy. With a basic knowledge of how SEO works, you’ll be well on your way to improving your business’s search engine ranking in no time.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website rank as high as possible on popular search engines, such as Google.
The higher your business ranks, the more traffic you’re likely to get, which means an increased chance for additional customers and conversions.
So, if you aren’t yet leveraging SEO, you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity to to increase your website visitors and pool of potential customers.
Part of the reason search engine optimization frustrates many people is that it changes regularly. When online marketers sink their teeth into a “new SEO strategy,” they like to explore it thoroughly. However, Google’s algorithm changes continuously, so what worked last year may not be as effective now.
Thus, search engine optimization is a continuous battle between the people who do SEO and the search engines algorithm updates.
How Does SEO Work?
Search engines want to offer the best quality results to their users. This means delivering information that is both relevant to the search query and provided quickly. Search engines are always adjusting their rankings to make sure they have the best possible results in the top positions.
To do this, search engines crawl or scan millions of websites to better understand what a site is about. This helps them deliver relevant results to users who are searching for specific keywords or topics.
Also, search engines will scan a website to establish whether it’s easy to read and navigate, rewarding sites that are user-friendly with higher rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Thus, SEO is the process that companies use to ensure that their websites rank well for relevant phrases and keywords.
For instance, let’s say you’ve published an article about writing copy that drives more sales. To get your content in front of the right audience, you’d optimize this blog post so that it has a higher chance of showing up as a top result for people searching for the phrase “how to write copy that converts”. Increasing your visibility in SERPs would ultimately lead to more users visiting your site.
How Search Engines Rank Sites
Google uses over two hundred ranking factors, so there are many things to consider and actions to take when optimizing a website. On-page and off-page ranking factors establish how well your website is optimized and thus how well it ranks.
The on-page factors include title tags, key words, image alt tags, page URLs, and internal linking. In contrast, off-page ranking factors include links to your website from other websites, which are properly known as backlinks.
Final Thoughts
SEO offers a ton of benefits to your business. By learning how SEO works, you can improve your SEO strategy and work into expanding your site’s visibility on the search engines. This can help you reach and engage more prospective customers. Click this link to learn about the average cost of SEO.
