What The Heck is SEO?
Date: January 29, 2019
By: Shaun Pingitore
If your IT department isn’t talking about it, your Marketing team definitely is. Whatever the case may be, there is one question many business owners are asking; What The Heck is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of arranging and organizing data on your website so that Search Engines such as Google are able to recognize what quality & type of information are on your site. The goal of SEO is to get your website in front of more people, but more importantly—the right people.
Search Engine Optimization is a buzz word amongst both IT departments and marketing departments everywhere. The various techniques range from very technical aspects like backlinks & site directories (more in a future article), to more marketing related aspects such as keyword strategies & content creation. There are various techniques and tools used for SEO, but since it is still a rather new & ever-changing topic, there is much to be learned & practitioners must always stay up to date.
How is A Website Optimized?
There is no one true way to do SEO, but rather a series of best practices & techniques that must be maintained and constantly improved upon.
It all starts with how well your website is built. An improperly built website, or one on a weaker platform (DIY website builders) may hurt your SEO. Your page names & sitemap are the first place Google will go to understand what type of website you have. These first steps are the groundwork that must be laid in order for your website to appear in searches.
After these basic steps are taken care of, there are a variety of other approaches you can take to help your site appear in a top spot on Google Searches. Keywords are a very effective way to help your site rank higher, as well as to help attract the right types of people to your site. A strategy for selecting & using keywords is critical for your business. While you should use your selected keywords on your website, you may also opt to pay for “Cost-Per-Click” advertising, which will rank your website higher for certain keywords, and you pay for each click that your website receives because of that advertising.
Another important factor to the success of your SEO campaign is your website’s content. In order for Google to recognize your site as current, you must consistently post content. This may come in the form of blog posts, articles, and written material, or other media such as video & audio. One thing to consider is it is not just the consistency, but also the quality of the content you put out. Your content should seek to bring new visitors to your site, but also to engage them, and to re-engage old visitors to get people spending more time on your site.
While you don’t necessarily have to pay for Cost-Per-Click advertising to be successful, a combination of organic SEO techniques, as well as non-organic or paid techniques is usually best.
What Does This Mean For My Business?
Having a website is critical to the success of any business these days. Spending a little time learning the basics of what SEO is and how it’s done can dramatically increase the revenue your website is able to bring in. SEO is the foundation for driving traffic to your website, and eventually growing that traffic. Any visitor to your site is a potential lead, a potential business relationship, or a potential sale.
While SEO is far from rocket science, and many people are able to do it on their own, the amount of time and energy it takes to maintain the consistency required to see substantial returns will require the help of an expert. It is, however, a very worthwhile thing for any growing business to invest at least a little time or money into, in order to further that growth.
How Do I Do It?
While the more technical aspects of SEO such as organizing page names and site maps for your website are more likely to require an expert’s help, it is easy enough for anyone to do keyword research using Google Trends & other free tools to see which keywords may be ideal to target for your business.
When selecting which keywords to include on your website, and which to target with Cost-Per-Click Advertising, pay careful attention to who your ideal customer is, and what they may be searching for.
There are many tools available online, both paid & free, that assist with SEO. When using these tools, it is important to remember that you get what you pay for, and even then, the most expensive tools are only as good as how much time and effort you put into using them.
How Does Bluedot Tech Help?
At Bluedot Tech, we start by making sure you have the foundation laid; Your website is properly organized to be read by Google. From there, we sit down with you to understand your business & create a Search Engine Optimization strategy that will see your website driving as much traffic as possible. Once your website is driving traffic, we help you turn that traffic into revenue.
We offer monthly reporting with our websites that provide valuable statistics on how your site is performing. With this information, we can help you set goals for improvement, and help to reach those goals.
This article will be the first in a series getting more and more in-depth for those who wish to learn more. But please do not hesitate at any time to get in contact with us. We would love to sit down with you to answer all your questions, & to show you how we can grow together.
