Be Seen: Search Engine Optimization
WHAT IS SEO?
SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is the process of growing visibility in organic search engines. Organic searches are non-paid searches, unlike paid advertisement. This means wanting your website to be on top of the search engine and not lost in page 13 of Google Results. This process has the goal of increasing awareness in search engines, improving ranking, and driving traffic to your website. SEO is based on things such as the words on your website and the way other websites link people to your website. In order for this to be done easily, you need to make your site search engine friendly. Search Engine Optimization can be beneficial in various ways, while some traffic can be driven from social media, the majority of web traffic is driven by SEO. Restaurants are one of the many businesses that can benefit from SEO. For instance, if you are hungry in Seattle and want to search for nearby Italian restaurants, your first instinct is not to go on social media to find one, you are more likely to go on Google and look at the first couple of restaurants that come up. If you have an Italian Restaurant in Seattle, you want to be on top of the search engine. Google only showed the top 3 Italian restaurants, only clicking “see more” will show you the other Italian restaurants in Seattle.
Search engines give people what they are looking for and if the search engines can’t find your website then the opportunity of coming up in a search is missed. Not only is the opportunity missed for traffic to your site, but your content is also not added to the search engine database. SEO can determine the success of a company because SEO is more effective than other types of marketing when it comes to driving traffic, publicity, and rate of return. Think of it this way, the right SEO can bring thousands of people to your website while the wrong SEO can hide your site in the search results where no one can find it. There are a lot of companies that offer the same goods and services as you, the market for many things are getting more competitive and SEO helps boost ranking thus making it easier for the searchers to find it.
WHAT IS LINK BUILDING?
Link building is earning hyperlinks from other website to your website. Link building is a hard process but breaking down the link can help one better understand it. The start of the link tag communicates to the search engine that there is a link coming up. The link referral location is the URL for a website, picture, pdf download, etc. The visible text of link is the text that users see on the page. The closure link tells the engine that the link tag has ended.
The links are important because they help discover new web pages and they help determine how a page is ranked. This ties back into wanting to be ranked high for search engines so your websites can be seen. This is done by taking the content of pages and adding it to the indexes of the search engines. The search engines check for the quality of the page, page content, relevant words, and the number of external pages linking to this page. This does not mean any website that links your website, the quality of that external website also matters. The higher ranked the external website is the better. Think of it this way: when you recommend a product to someone, it means that you trust and like the product, but if the recommendation is coming from a person you trust more, the recommendations mean more. When determining the ranking of a website, if all the other factors are the same, the amount and quality of links pointing to your website will determine the ranking.
Link building benefits a business because high quality links pointed to your website can increase the chance of ranking but it can also help your business become more trustworthy by building relationships with influencers in the industry. Influencers are known for their expertise in the industry, thus their recommendations mean more. If your website has relevant information, then the external website can help drive traffic to your website. For instance, if a blog about ice cream links another website about ice cream, the readers are likely to click that link because they enjoy reading about ice cream. Lastly, a good link can help build your brand with content marketing, if your content is good and worth sharing, then people will share it.
IMPORTANT ISSUES IN THE WORLD OF SEO
SEO plays an important role in your company's success but there are some issues surrounding SEO. Luckily, most of the issues are easy to solve, so this is manageable. One technical solution can be solved by checking indexation. This can be done by typing site:{yoursitename.com} and Google search will show you how many pages on your site are ranking. With this information, you can see if pages in indexes are unwanted or missing.
A developer’s job is essential when it comes to SEO, forgetting to change the robots.txt file after redeveloping your website can ruin your site’s organic traffic. To check this, go to yoursitename.com/robors/txt and make sure it doesn't show “User-agent:*Disallow:/”
It should look like this:
Thank you for reading and hope you learned a thing or two about SEO!