If you're trying to market your brand, you know that in order to compete in today's world, you need to have an engaging — yet — bold, aggressive, and strong online presence. Can you imagine the shift to your business if you could double or maybe even triple your number of website visitors weekly? But to do that, your SEO needs to be on point. So, for starters, do you know what SEO is? Let's delve into what SEO is and why it matters.
What Exactly Is SEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) is the method of fashioning your website to be more appealing to search engines, the process of enhancing your website to bring unpaid, and organic traffic from search engine results. What's the point of having a website if no one can locate it? Onsite SEO, which pertains to the content on your website, should be the main focus of your SEO efforts.
Then there's Offsite SEO, which integrates sites with a backlink to yours, giving it authority. Use these concepts to build an impressive website that users can easily find. SEO can be grouped into two categories: on-page and off-page SEO. We'll break it into four sections for easier understanding. Let's get started.
1. On-Page SEO
3. Off-Page SEO
4, Local SEO
1. On-Page SEO
When you say on-page SEO, like many business owners, the first thing you think about is page content and keywords. It's just one of the various stigmas that surround SEO. It's important to separate the technical elements from the non-technical, and you may want to think about:
Layout
Design
Content
Keyword Selection
Keyword Placement
Choose your keywords based on your brand's opportunity, not the volume of searches. If you want your content to be completely thought out and valuable to your audience, it looks pleasing to the eye and is easy to navigate. The word "opportunity" refers to keywords that were chosen due to the opportunity for you to secure and rank traffic from them.
2. Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to improving your website to allow search engines to crawl your website much more easily. Many businesses rarely consider SEO when starting their new business website. But that's where it all begins, and you need to have a structure in place that's sensible from a search standpoint but is easily navigational. It's of utter importance to take into consideration all components of your website in correlation to SEO.
For example, let's say your website has a bunch of 301 redirects or takes a long time to load, it's likely you're losing massive traffic. However, knowing what areas make up the technical aspects of SEO can eliminate many performance issues.
These are the components that make up technical SEO:
Code
Errors
Schema
Meta Tags
Site Speed
Index Ability
Link Structure
Website Structure
Image Optimization
Usability & Friendliness
Now, if you look at it from a traditional aspect, then technical SEO is connected to on-page SEO. Ask Kevin Brown Design how we can help. Take a look at our portfolio over here.
3. Off-Page SEO
In general, off-page SEO is just as simplistic as on-page SEO. The hint is in the names. However, off-page SEO has more to do with how techniques are being used to improve your website's ranking while off of your website.
The practice of securing high-quality and relevant backlinks to your website involves link building, and building links is significant to improving your website's overall ranking of a page.
Take a look at some tactics used to help with link building, as there are many of them.
Interviews
Guest Posts
Infographics
Social Media
Link Outreach
Content Marketing
Social Bookmarking
Blog & Forum Commenting
4. Local SEO
Since search rankings are different based on location, it's important that your website is optimized so that you can obtain local search rankings. You may want to use local search strategies to make sure that your business is locally visible.
Your goal is to have your brand listed in high-quality search directories, however, when you do decide to create a profile, it's important that it's fine-tuned with proper NAP data.
SEO is really just one part of your marketing strategy, but one that will continue to have an increased role in how people and businesses make buying decisions.
Where to Start?
We know that this can all sound a bit overwhelming, and honestly, if you're not familiar with SEO, and you're trying to get your brand out there in the great virtual world, it probably will be overwhelming for someone who's inexperienced. You can either hire professionals, or do your own due diligence and research, and look for tutorials to teach yourself.