Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Made Easy

So what really is SEO?

In short, SEO is a “marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO encompasses both the technical and creative elements required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines” (Moz.com).

Think of it this way: you just spent thousands of dollars and countless hours on a beautiful, brand new website. This website is your digital billboard to the world. Wouldn’t it be a shame if there was a massive tree obstructing the view? The same goes for your website - what good is a website that nobody can see or find? The reality is there’s millions of trees, or web pages, obstructing the view. With 3.5 billion web searches being processed daily, your website needs SEO to increase its search result ranking.

How will I ever make it to the front page?

SEO may be complex, but even a basic understanding of ranking factors and your target audience can produce profitable results. These steps will give you a solid foundation for your SEO marketing plan:

1. Before you can dive into the world of SEO, you need to see where you currently stand. If this is your first experience with SEO, that’s perfectly fine! Your first task is to test the effectiveness of your website – and I’ve outlined some of the best free tools to do so:

• SEMrush – gives a domain overview for online marketing. This powerful intelligence suite looks at keywords, backlinks, and site competitors.
• Google Mobile Friendly Test – tests the responsiveness of your web design to ensure your pages perform well on all mobile devices. 
• Moz Spam Score – examines potential factors or errors that will penalize your site ranking, so you can correct them and rank higher. (Free trial)  

Feel free to throw in the URL’s of some of your competitors, too: learn from their strengths and capitalize on their weaknesses. 

2. The next step is to reflect and identify your customer personas. Your keywords will directly correlate to how and what your personas are searching for. But before we continue, let’s review what each of these terms actually mean: 

• Customer Persona: A semi fictional representation of ideal customers for your business, based on client data as well as demographic or behavioral speculations.
• Keywords: Words and phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines. 

What do either of these digital marketing buzzwords have to do with your SEO strategy? Well, this will help you understand how and what your customers are searching! Rand Fishkin, CEO of Moz, wrote how empathy is one of the most important elements to building an online marketing strategy. It’s true: once you grasp what your target market is looking for, you can more effectively reach and keep those users. 

This is exactly how you will begin to determine your keywords. One important search engine ranking factor is keyword-rich content. You can easily optimize your content by including the keywords and vernacular that you think your personas would be searching for. Don’t butcher these keywords; most engines will view this as spam and penalize your search ranking. 

3. Once you’ve locked down your keywords, you can determine what kind of content to publish. Content is a major key in SEO to ranking high and creating value for your personas. With optimization and social media, your content will organically rank towards your targeted audience. This is the power of Inbound Marketing. 

Another rank factor is links. Search engines tend to view well-linked websites as more credible and relevant for their users. Make sure that your website navigation is intuitive and clean out those broken links. Broken links limit the search engines ability to crawl through your web pages. This also applies to external links to your website – so create a local business listing on Google, and push your content on social media harder for those shares and retweets. The more credible websites sending traffic to your site, the better. 

4. You’re already doing great. As you begin to see more traffic and interaction with your site, it seems like your SEO efforts are beginning to pay off. But wait – your job is not finished. Search engines are constantly evolving and being improved in order to generate the best possible results for searchers. 

It can be demanding, but you need to keep at it if you want your SEO to succeed. If you quit creating content or pursue the wrong keywords, it can be easy to fall behind. The constant changes and competitive nature of SEO are just a part of the game: you need to constantly monitor your progress to see what’s working, and what isn’t. Try a new keyword. Try pushing content on social media weekly. Chip away at any red flags on your website that SEMrush recommends. 

The steps I’ve curated in this guide are only just the beginning of your SEO journey. These basic principles of SEO along with Inbound content and a few important ranking factors are enough to make a positive impact on any business’s website. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Search Engine Optimization or improving your digital strategy, we would love to chat with you.