Search Engine Optimization (also known as SEO), a growing discipline within the larger umbrella of internet marketing, is the practice and discipline of growing a websites visibility on search engine result pages (SERPS). Think about how you might find out information on a product, or identify where a product is sold. Your first step, most likely, is to Google it. How likely are you to click on a search result that appears on the tenth page of results—probably not very likely. So, SEO attempts to take the site that ends up far back in the list of search results, and help it move to the first or second page. This article will outline some of the leading strategies of SEO for individuals looking to improve their web presence.
Step One: Research
Use a tool like Moz Keyword Explorer or Google’s Keyword Planner to identify which terms are the most popular phrases people use to search for your product. For example, you may discover that although the leading search query might be “coffee,” you may also notice that people type in “raw coffee beans” or “100% Arabica coffee” or “Colombian coffee.” Or, people will add on a specific location, like “third wave coffee in Chicago” or “coffee from Ethiopia.” Knowing how your customer researches the product is the first step to understanding how to market it to them.
Step Two: Build Content
To add value to the webpage, in the eyes of a search engine, you need to add rich, original content (articles, reviews, links) with these popular search terms in mind, but be careful not to overdo it with the keywords. Sites that repeat the same keyword phrase over and over again are more likely to be perceived as spam and actually go down in rank on the search engine results page. A couple uses of the exact keyword is plenty—less is more in this situation. Imagine reading something that starts “Our 100% Arabica coffee is available here on our website where you can choose from a variety of 100% Arabica coffees and then have your 100% Arabica coffee shipped to you for free.” Not only is it obnoxious to read, but it does not convince the search engines that your content is important. Instead, only create real content that users will want to read and share.
Step Three: Build Relationships
In addition to keyword planning, link building is another one of the most important strategies in search engine optimization. In addition to how relevant a website might be to a customer’s search string, search engines also detect how many outside sites link to your content. Using an internet marketing company can help you to achieve or get started on this step, as they have built many, many relationships with different types of companies. The text actually used in the hyperlink, known as the anchor text, much like specific keywords, increases the value of a link. Much like keyword planning, links are easy to abuse and search engines are able to distinguish the “link neighborhood,” or the type of sites that link to one another. A great way to increase the number of links is to create content that users will naturally want to share on their blogs, social media, and websites. Consider having a goal of uploading new content to your site on a daily or weekly basis to build up a readership. One of the easiest ways to build a link partnership is to create a badge or logo that your business partners and associates can use on their website and offering to do the same in return.
Step Four: Troubleshoot
In this final step, check that you are not using any SEO hacks—that is, that you aren’t setting up some sort of false system to raise the importance of your site. This could include manipulative linking strategies, like spamming your link on forums and blogs, creating multiple websites for the purposes of linking back and forth, and link farms, where, for a small fee, a website will simply place a link on their webpage along with hundreds of others. Another common SEO hack is cloaking—this is where you’d hide extra text on your webpage that will be viewable to the search engine but not viewable to the customer, often achieved by changing the color or size of the text, or putting the text within the HTML of the site. Lastly, check for repetitiveness, both on the keyword level and on the site level—the duplicate content is a red flag to search engines that your content is not original or valuable to consumers.
