Digital Clicks writes:
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the process by which websites improve their organic (unpaid) search ranking on search engines such as Google. The aim is to increase your website’s ranking, which is where it appears in the search results. This should very much improve your website traffic. In an ideal environment, your website would end up on the first page, since 75% of searchers don’t even click through to the second page; or even end up in the top 3 results, where up to 90% of searchers will choose you. Reaching these dizzying heights cannot be done without employing some SEO methodologies.
What is involved?
Here are some of the many factors which must go into a great SEO strategy.
Site speed
We humans are, on the whole, an impatient lot. We don’t like waiting, and a slow loading time will send us to the back button. Google understands this. Faster loading speeds will increase your ranking, just as slow mobile speeds will be penalised. The improvement may be minimal, but it is still a factor and not to be ignored.
Headers help to segment your page to make reading text easier. They are useful for long posts, or to clearly separate data from the rest of the text. They don’t have as much value in ranking as some of the other factors on this list, but you're best viewing search engine algorithms as giants checklists, and this is one of those tick-boxes.
Categories and subcategories enable you to sort your content so that users have a better experience finding what they want to read on your page. They are broad and general, so can be broken down into sub-categories if necessary. A useful side effect of having a well-categorised site is that much-trafficked links stand a chance of raking in Google’s search.
There are many ways to ensure that your URL structure is helping to improve your ranking. Most of those involve coding, but there are some which anyone can do. Putting keywords in your URL, for example. Search engines can crawl through any URL structure you end up with, but straightforward URL with keywords in are much more SEO friendly.
Backlinks, also called inbound links, are links from other websites to your website. Google’s ranking algorithm puts rather high importance on the number of sites linking to your website. The more links you have, the more authoritative your content must be. However, Google is also very good at spotting spam or other shady ways of influencing this factor, so the links must be from high quality, relevant sites. Quality is more important than quantity! Remember that..
Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest- we could write a whole post on social media management! Social channels need different strategies in order to really succeed. However, they are useful for SEO because search engines use factors such as number of followers, shares and likes to help judge your rank.
Meta-descriptions are the text which appears beneath your link in a search result. They don’t have an effect your ranking, but they have a massive impact on your click-through rates. This is how likely users searching the web are to click on your website. If the meta-description is good and describes what they are after, then they are far more likely to click on it.
Whether or not your site is mobile-friendly will now have a massive effect on your ranking in mobile searches. Goggle has recently changed their algorithms so that sites which are not “mobile-friendly” are disadvantaged in mobile searches. There is no difference in desktop searches; however, this is still a vital factor because the number of searches taking place via mobile has exploded in the past year or two.
Internal linking is another often overlooked ranking factor in website or blog management. It has been described as “an SEO power technique”.. It connects one page within your website to a different page. It has three main uses: navigation; helping to define the hierarchical organisation of your site or blog; and most importantly spreading authority throughout all the linked pages. It does this by giving the search engine crawlers a clear path to follow, and so keeps them on your site for longer so they can gather more data with which to rank you.
Content is absolutely vital for successful SEO strategies. It could be blog posts or articles; these days, it is also guaranteed to involve social media. This means creating original posts for your social media accounts, but it also means sharing blog posts and articles across to your social audience too. You could also share positive mention of your business in the local paper or radio. It is vital to produce new content as often as you possibly can. However, creating regular new content must be balanced by keeping your content fresh and meaningful. If you write content just to have something to put out there, it is likely to be less interesting, relevant or attention-grabbing than something which you have put more thought into. The balancing act is very difficult if you are inexperienced in SEO..
Thanks for reading our What is SEO article – this post covers just a small number of factors involved with successful SEO. Be sure to visit our website digital marketing blog for all the latest happenings in digital marketing.