A Brief Description of SEO
What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of making your website as appealing as possible to the Search Engines like Google or Bing. Search engines use very complex ranking systems to choose what websites it will feature in its search results. Business is not what it used to be. In the past a company would place a business add in the phone book in hopes to grow their business. Times have changed! In today’s business world the vast majority of your potential customers are using the internet to find the business they are searching for. SEO is the process of maximizing your website’s potential to show in the top results of a search done on the internet.
Ranking Factors
There are many factors when a search engine is trying to determine what websites to feature in their search results. There are many opinions on what a search engine takes into account and how much weight they put into each factor. This pie chart shows information on possible ranking factors.
Each search engine has a unique algorithm and put different weight into each ranking factor.
Links: Links to a page on your website from other websites are a strong factor for your rankings.
Anchor Text: Refers to the text that is displayed on a link to your website.
Keywords: Managing how you use your keywords on your home page is of great importance for both SEO and lowing the cost of your pay per click campaigns by increasing your page’s add score.
Traffic and Click Through Rates: Search engines factor in how many times your website is shown vs clicked on. Time spent on the site, how many pages were viewed and how much time spent on each page are taken into account.
Social Media: Increasingly every year having good social media followings are important for your rankings. Facebook, Google +, You Tube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more social media venues are very good and lend your websites online trust.
Social Media Marketing: Social Media Marketing and management is a big task. You need to provide an engaging and entertaining form for your customers and people who share interests in your respective business. Hard work that goes into coming up with fresh content and interesting topics to post will keep your audience engaged. Building a community of online friends and business associates will help spread the word about your business and services.
Trust and Site Authority: Trust is built by good clean SEO practice and making sure that your website is not getting linked by link farms, untrusted directories and generally bad internet neighborhoods. Trust is what your website will achieve by having all the above ranking factors in good clean working order. When everything is working together your website will gain trust from the search engines and gain the keyword rankings you desire.