The ABCs of Search Engine Optimization
SEO is more often than not perceived as a very complicated process that needs to be done to a website in order to gain online traffic which is primarily what is needed to gain sales from the online market. But did you know that it is actually simpler than that?
What is SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a broad process comprising of a set of activities that generally aim to improve or boost a website’s rankings on search engine like Google. This increases the quality and number of potential visitors a website can have because Google’s algorithm persuades the Google users to click the first few results on Google upon searching without them knowing.
However, since SEO is a long process and most businessmen hardly have the knowledge and time to do it on their own, more often than not, SEO help from professionals is needed. Here, the following can come to the rescue:
- Individual SEO Consultants (or freelancers who render SEO services for a fee usually stipulated in a contract)
- SEO Agencies/Companies (usually composed of teams of SEO strategists, specialists, and assistants who follow a standardized set of SEO processes for the most part. Although these companies work mostly for businesses with decent size and a few thousand bucks’ budgets, there are some like San Francisco SEO companies who offer customizable services according to the client’s budget.
- In-house SEOs (usually present in larger companies who can afford to employ an in-house SEO team to do the job)
If your business is based in San Francisco, it is most likely going to be convenient journey working on your website’s SEO as the place is flooded with a number of reputable San Francisco SEO service providers that will surely work on your SEO needs with efficiency. Come time you need to choose, go for the company that can show you not just promising words but also proof of experience and excellence. How many clients has the company catered in the past? Were they satisfied? Were there amazing results? If you want to get the best value of your SEO investment, you have to look into this area one way or the other.
Befriending Google
Google is currently the most used search engine in the world. Its results are considered authoritative and relevant. According to research, websites on the first page of Google results get 95% of clicks while the other 5% comes from the 2nd page or onwards. In other words, the higher the website’s rank is on Google, the more likely it gains visitors from the online market.
If you want to make your website appear in Google’s top results, one of the effective ways to do so is by producing great content as this interests people to check out your webpage that is actually a part of your website. The key here is to make your webpages interesting and authoritative as much as possible and you can hardly achieve that by using images and other digital representations alone no matter how interesting they look. Without great content, these pages will not be able to earn a reader’s interest.
However, even if you have been producing contents nonstop, it will not immediately show a result. Google ranks pages by promoting authority pages to its rankings’ top. Hence, it is your job to create pages that can eventually qualify as authority pages. Your content should be share-worthy and for it to be share-worthy, it has to be useful enough for the reader to share it on blogs and social media.
Getting Links
Content quality and quantity are important components to massively boost your chances of securing natural links from quality relevant pages. But among these two, quality is more important and should be guaranteed at all times for you to invite more people to share or link your webpages to social media and other sites.
Improving Your Search Engine Ranking
Specifically, to get better search results on Google, you have to:
- Create useful and interesting content that uses or mentions phrases or words usually used by people who search for your service or product.
- Make these contents readable and shareable. In other words, they have to be published and bear a link.
- Do #s 1 and 2 over and over again.
But to take better advantage of it, there has to be an effective SEO strategy. In other words, even if you have been writing contents nonstop, if they mention less accurate keywords, you will see only sporadic, small results. You’ve paid a lot for writers but you won’t be able to see consistent traffic increases. It’s going to be a waste of investment.
An expert SEO company will start the work with an on-site technical SEO audit to know which areas are winnable. Then from there, the best keywords to target or mention will be identified. Don’t worry, the audit is not an additional expense. It is already part of the SEO service you will be charged for.
Backlinks Matter
Search engine algorithms treat backlinks as an integral part of the process. All search engine optimization activities are targeted at building links to a website in order to boost its rankings on Google. However, not all backlinks are created equal. And your focus should be to earn one good backlink as it promises a better ROI than a thousand low-quality ones.
Low-quality backlinks happen when your content which contains a link to your website is posted on a low-quality blog site that has bad domain authority and spam ratings. If it costs $20 or less, it’s most likely a bad link. A good quality link usually costs $50 or more.
The Risk of Following Google’s Best Practices
Google averagely updates its SEO algorithms 500 times in a year with an aim to provide better results for searchers. Hence, companies are discouraged to always follow Google’s best practices and leave a room to adjust to these changes instead.