SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization
SEO is improving your visibility and traffic to your website in search engine (Google & Bing) search results.
As you probably know, most websites are found by people using search engines such as Google to type in related words, or phrases to help them find exactly what they are looking for. Once you type in your search term into the search engine, you’ll be provided with pages of results related to those terms.
Every business wants their website to rank on the first page and in the top results when people search terms related to them, this is where SEO comes in to play.
It can be surprising to some people where they fall in a search engines result page. Search engines all have their own ranking algorithms that aren’t completely public, therefore people can’t cheat the system to get their pages ranked first, but there are ways to help improve your ranking.
Many people will put money behind Google AdWords which allows for your business to bid on keywords and phrases that are related to your website, helping improve your rank when people search those related keywords.
Search engines want to provide their users with the best content related to what they are searching for. Otherwise people wouldn’t use them. Therefore search engines seek out particular elements on your website to help determine where you will rank in results. Some of these elements are as follows:
- Content: What is on your website, and is it labeled properly?
- Performance: How fast is your website, and does it work properly?
- Authority: Are other authoritative websites linking to your content?
- User Experience: How does your site look? What is your site-map look like? Is it easy to navigate?
Some of the things that many people make the mistake of doing in hopes to try and improve their SEO that will actually negatively affect your sites rank are overusing keywords, purchasing links, and providing poor user experience.
Keep in mind that many people don’t even make it past the first page of their search results, so if your business is falling on the last results page, it’s safe to assume your website isn’t making it on the screens of many people. Search your business, and related keywords and see if you are appearing where you would like to appear, and if you’re not, begin to look into ways you can optimize your website through SEO.
