SEO Best Practices

When it comes to search engine optimization, remember, it’s not rocket science. Think of it more like an art. But you don’t splash paint on canvas, and voila! You can’t optimize your website, walk away and forget about it. It’s an ongoing work of art.

Search engines look for websites updated on a regular basis with fresh content. You must create new content for users to latch onto. If users can use the information provided, search engines will reward the content with good rankings. Following SEO best practices, we recommend optimizing a website by looking at it the same way search engines would when they determine its ranking. Carefully examine and consider these criteria: relevancy, prominence, and accessibility.

1.) Relevancy. It’s about selecting the right keywords to use on a website. To optimize your site, use the same words your target audience will search. A lot of research goes into figuring out those exact keywords and phrases. In search results, search engines will include websites that best apply to a particular search. Obviously, a website won’t always rank number one for Google’s billions of search, but it could rank in the top three to five. So, pick the right keywords to optimize your website.

2.) Prominence. It’s everything else happening on the Internet about your website. You gain prominence when other websites link to yours. These links could be anything from important industry directories to links in social media. Social media signals are one of the latest factors taken into account by search engines when determining ranking. Generally speaking, the more a page is shared on social media networks, the better ranking (visibility) it will receive in search engines.

3.) Accessibility. Many technical factors can improve or damage the ranking of a website. If a website doesn't have a robots.txt file or it disallows search engine spiders from crawling the site then search engines won’t index or rank it. If your website loads slowly, it can create a bad user experience. Search engines are interested in users having a good experience when they use Google or Bing, so, your website won't rank as well as one with a faster load time.

Why are these SEO best practices so important?

When you apply best practices in search engine optimization, the results can be extremely rewarding. Here is a short list of some of the results you can expect:

1.) Better visibility. Higher rankings on search result pages means better visibility. Depending on how competitive your market is, being on the first page of Google could translate into thousands of consumers looking at your business.

2.) Better qualified traffic: If you target the “right” keywords in your content, then you attract the “right” traffic to your site. You will attract consumers in different stages of their buying cycles, but make it a priority to target those who are ready to convert (buy or get a quote).

3.) Better conversions (sales and leads): By attracting more qualified traffic, you increase the chance of converting traffic. Depending on your business, the actual sale may take effort, but search engine optimization will help you convert your website into a sales tool to aid in “making the sale.” Sometimes, it will make the sale for you.

So, where do you start with search engine optimization?

Follow these steps and you'll be on your way to making SEO work best for you.

1.) Good web design and development. Design and develop a website that's search engine friendly and optimized for a good user experience.

2.) Solid research. Conduct research to find the “right” content and keywords for your website. Once you know the information your target audience seeks, write about it on your website.

3.) Good content and links. Once you have cleaned up your website and stocked it with good content, invite others to link to it. Social media is a great way to engage your audience.

If doing all this on your own sounds daunting, hire an agency to handle some or all of it for you. The agency’s job is to find out as much as possible about your business and, together, you make it happen.

Remember, things always change with SEO. The way search engine optimization works today may not apply five years from now. So, consider SEO as part of your overall web strategy instead of THE only strategy.

Supporting content for blog post:
“How Search Engine Optimization works” video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyCYyoGusqs.

Infographic: “how search works”