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What is the first thing you do when you need new marketing ideas? What about when you decide it’s time to change the way you keep the books finally? Or even notice a flat tire in the car? My guess: you turn to Google. But did you know that 89% of B2B buyers and 81% of online shoppers do the same? Faced with a problem, challenge or even a choice, they google it. Simply. And so, it’s a cold, harsh truth that without at least some presence in Google, your business is unlikely to survive long. In this guide, you’ll discover a strategy to build this presence — Search Engine Optimization (SEO.) You’ll learn what SEO is, how it works, and what you must do to position your site in search engine results. But before we begin, I want to reassure you of something. So many resources make SEO complex. They scare readers with technical jargon, focus on advanced elements, and rarely explain anything beyond theory. I promise you, this guide isn’t like that. In the following pages, I’m going to break SEO into its most basic parts and show you how to use all its elements to construct a successful SEO strategy. (And to stay up-to-date on SEO strategy and trends. Keep on reading to understand SEO, or jump ahead to the section that interests you most.
What is SEO? At its core, SEO focuses on nothing else but expanding a company’s visibility in the organic search results. It helps businesses rank more pages higher in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages.) And in turn, drive more visitors to the site, increasing chances for more conversions. When asked to explain what SEO is, I often choose to call it a strategy to ensure that when someone googles your product or service category, they find your website. But this simplifies the discipline a bit. It doesn’t take elements like different customer information needs into consideration. However, it does reveal its essence. In short, SEO drives two things — rankings and visibility. Rankings This is a process that search engines use to determine where to place a particular web page in SERPs. Visibility This term describes how prominent a particular domain is in search engine results. With high visibility, your domain is prominent in SERPs. Lower search visibility occurs when a domain isn’t visible for many relevant search queries. Both are responsible for delivering the main SEO objectives – traffic and conversions. There is one more reason why you should be using SEO. The discipline helps you position your brand throughout almost the entire buying journey. In turn, it can ensure that your marketing strategies match the new buying behavior. Because, as Google admitted themselves — customer behavior has changed forever. Today, more people use search engines to find products or services than any other marketing channel. 18% more shoppers choose Google over Amazon. 136% more prefer the search engine to other retail websites. And B2B buyers conduct up to 12 searches, on average, before engaging with a brand. What's more, they prefer going through the majority of the buying process on their own. 77% people research a brand before engaging with it. Forrester revealed that 60% of customers do not want any interaction with salespeople. Further, 68% prefer to research on their own. And 62% have developed their own criteria to select the right vendor. What’s more, this process has never been more complicated. Finally, Demand Gen’s 2017 B2B Buyer’s Survey found that 61% of B2B buyers start the buying process with a broad web search. In comparison, only 56% go directly to a vendor’s website. But how do they use search engines during the process? Early in the process, they use Google to find information about their problem. Some also inquire about potential solutions. Then, they evaluate available alternatives based on reviews or social media hype before inquiring with a company. But this happens after they’ve exhausted all information sources. And so, the only chance for customers to notice and consider you is by showing up in their search results. Featured Resource
How does Google know how to rank a page? Search engines have a single goal only. They aim to provide users with the most relevant answers or information. Every time you use them, their algorithms choose pages that are the most relevant to your query. And then, rank them, displaying the most authoritative or popular ones first. To deliver the right information to users, search engines analyze two factors:
And to analyze all this information they use complex equations calledsearch algorithms. Search engines keep their algorithms secret. But over time, SEOs have identified some of the factors they consider when ranking a page. We refer to them as ranking factors, and they are the focus of an SEO strategy. As you’ll shortly see, adding more content, optimizing image filenames, or improving internal links can affect your rankings and search visibility. And that’s because each of those actions improves a ranking factor. Three Core Components of a Strong SEO Strategy To optimize a site, you need to improve ranking factors in three areas — technical website setup, content, and links. So, let’s go through them in turn. 1. Technical Setup For your website to rank, three things must happen: First, a search engine needs find your pages on the Web. Then, it must scan them to understand their topics and identify their keywords. And finally, it needs to add them to its index — a database of all the content it has found on the web. This way, its algorithm can consider displaying your website for relevant queries. Seem simple, doesn’t it? Certainly, nothing to worry about. After all, since you can visit your site without any problem, so should Google, right? Unfortunately, there is a catch. A web page looks different for you and the search engine. You see it as a collection of graphics, colors, text with its formatting, and links. To a search engine, it’s nothing but text. As a result, any elements it cannot render this way remain invisible to the search engine. And so, in spite of your website looking fine to you, Google might find its content inaccessible. Let me show you an example. Here’s how a typical search engine sees one of our articles. It’s this one, by the way, if you want to compare it with the original. Notice some things about it:
That’s where technical setup, also called on-site optimization, comes in. It ensures that your website and pages allow Google to scan and index them without any problems. The most important factors affecting it include: Website navigation and links Search engines crawl sites just like you would. They follow links. Search engine crawlers land on a page and use links to find other content to analyze. But as you’ve seen above, they cannot see images. So, set the navigation and links as text-only. Simple URL structureSearch engines don’t like reading lengthy strings of words with complex structure. So, if possible, keep your URLs short. Set them up to include as little beyond the main keyword for which you want to optimize the page, as possible. Page speedSearch engines, use the load time — the time it takes for a user to be able to read the page — as an indicator of quality. Many website elements can affect it. Image size, for example. Use Google’s Page Speed Insights Tool for suggestions how to improve your pages. Dead links or broken redirects. A dead link sends a visitor to a nonexistent page. A broken redirect points to a resource that might no longer be there. Both provide poor user experience but also, prevent search engines from indexing your content. Sitemap A sitemap is a simple file that lists all URLs on your site. Search engines use it to identify what pages to crawl and index. A robots.txt file, on the other hand, tells search engines what content not to index (for example, specific policy pages you don’t want to appear in search.) Create both to speed up crawling and indexing of your content. Duplicate contentPages containing identical or quite similar content confuse search engines. They often find it near impossible to determine what content they should display in search results. For that reason, search engines consider duplicate content as a negative factor. And upon finding it, can penalize a website by not displaying any of those pages at all. Featured Resource
2. Content Every time you use a search engine, you’re looking for content— information on a particular issue or problem, for example. True, this content might come in different formats. It could be text, like a blog post or a web page. But it could also be a video, product recommendation, and even a business listing. It’s all content. And for SEO, it’s what helps gain greater search visibility. Here are two reasons why:
While crawling a page, they determine its topic. Analyzing elements like page length or its structure helps them assess its quality. Based on this information, search algorithms can match a person’s query with pages they consider the most relevant to it. The process of optimizing content begins with keyword research. Keyword Research SEO is not about getting any visitors to the site. You want to attract people who need what you sell and can become leads, and later, customers. However, that’s possible only if it ranks for the keywords those people would use when searching. Otherwise, there’s no chance they’d ever find you. And that’s even if your website appeared at the top of the search results. That’s why SEO work starts with discovering what phrases potential buyers enter into search engines. The process typically involves identifying terms and topics relevant to your business. Then, converting them into initial keywords. And finally, conducting extensive research to uncover related terms your audience would use. With a list of keywords at hand, the next step is to optimize your content. SEOs refer to this process as on-page optimization. On-Page Optimization On-page optimization, also called on-page SEO, ensures that search engines a.) understand a page’s topic and keywords, and b.) can match it to relevant searches. Note, I said “page” not content. That’s because, although the bulk of on-page SEO work focuses on the words you use, it extends to optimizing some elements in the code. You may have heard about some of them — meta-tags like title or description are two most popular ones. But there are more. So, here’s a list of the most crucial on-page optimization actions to take. Note: Since blog content prevails on mostwebsites,when speaking of those factors, I’ll focus on blog SEO — optimizing blog posts for relevant keywords. However, all this advice is equally valid for other page types too. Featured Resource
a) Keyword Optimization First, ensure that Google understands what keywords you want this page to rank. To achieve that, make sure you include at least the main keyword in the following:
The alt tag, on the other hand, is text browsers display instead of an image (for visually impaired visitors.) However, since ALT tag resides in the image code, search engines use it as a relevancy signal as well. Also, add semantic keywords — variations or synonyms of your keyword. Google and other search engines use them to determine a page’s relevancy better. Let me illustrate this with a quick example. Let’s pretend that your main keyword is “Apple.” But do you mean the fruit or the tech giant behind the iPhone? Now, imagine what happens when Google finds terms like sugar, orchard, or cider in the copy? The choice what queries to rank it for would immediately become obvious, right? That’s what semantic keywords do. Add them to ensure that your page doesn’t start showing up for irrelevant searches. b) Non-Keyword-Related On-Page Optimization Factors On-page SEO is not just about sprinkling keywords across the page. The factors below help confirm a page’s credibility and authority too:
3. Links From what you’ve read in this guide so far, you know that no page will rank without two factors — relevance and authority. In their quest to provide users with the most accurate answers, Google and other search engines prioritize pages they consider the most relevant to their queries but also, popular. The first two areas — technical setup and content — focused on increasing relevancy (though I admit, some of their elements can also help highlight the authority.) Links, however, are responsible for popularity. But before we talk more about how they work, here’s what SEOs mean when talking about links. What is a backlink? Links, also called backlinks, are references to your content on other websites. Every time another website mentions and points their readers to your content, you gain a backlink to your site. For example, this article in Entrepreneur.com mentions our marketing statistics page. It also links to it allowing their readers to see other stats than the one quoted. Google uses quantity and quality of links like this as a signal of a website’s authority. Its logic behind it is that webmasters would reference a popular and high-quality website more often than a mediocre one. But note that I mentioned links quality as well. That’s because not all links are the same. Some — low-quality ones — can impact your rankings negatively. Links Quality FactorsLow quality or suspicious links — for example, ones that Google would consider as built deliberately to make it consider a site as more authoritative — might reduce your rankings. That’s why, when building links, SEOs focus not on buildingany links. They aim to generate the highest quality references possible. Naturally, just like with the search algorithm, we don’t know what factors determine a link’s quality, specifically. However, over time, SEOs discovered some of them:
Link BuildingIn SEO, we refer to the process of acquiring new backlinks as link building. And as many practitioners admit, it can be a challenging activity. Link building, if you want to do it well, requires creativity, strategic thinking, and patience. To generate quality links, you need to come up with a link building strategy. And that’s no small feat. Remember, your links must pass various quality criteria. Plus, it can’t be obvious to search engines that you’ve built them deliberately. Here are some strategies to do it:
Now, if you’re still here with me, then you’ve just discovered what’s responsible for your site’s success in search. The next step, then, is figuring out whether your efforts are working. How to Monitor & Track SEO ResultsTechnical setup, content, and links are critical to getting a website into the search results. Monitoring your efforts helps improve your strategy further. Measuring SEO success means tracking data about traffic, engagement, and links. And though, most companies develop their own sets of SEO KPIs (key performance indicators), here are the most common ones:
Local SEO Up until now, we focused on getting a site rank in search results in general. If you run a local business, however, Google also lets you position it in front of potential customers in your area, specifically. But for that, you use local SEO. And it’s well worth it. 97% of customers use search engines to find local information. They look for vendor suggestions, and even specific business addresses. In fact, 12% of customers look for local business information every day. What’s more, they act on this information: 75% of searchers visit a local store or company’s premises within 24 hours of the search. But hold on, is local SEO different from what we’ve been talking all along? Yes and no. Search engines follow similar principles for both local and global rankings. But given that they position a site for specific, location-based results, they need to analyze some other ranking factors too. Local search results look different too:
For example, a localpack, the most prominent element of local results, includes almost all information a person would need to choose a business. For example, here are local results Google displays for the phrase “best restaurant in Boston.” Note that these results contain no links to any content. Instead, they include a list of restaurants in the area, a map to show their locations, and additional information about each:
Often, they also include a company’s phone number or website address. All this information combined helps customers choose which business to engage. But it also allows Google to determine how to rank it. Local Search Ranking Factors When analyzing local websites, Google looks at the proximity to a searcher’s location. With the rise of local searches containing the phrase, “near me,” it’s only fair that Google will try to present the closest businesses first. Keywords are essential for local SEO too. However, one additional element of on-page optimization is the presence of a company’s name, address, and phone number of a page. In local SEO, we refer to it as the NAP. Again, it makes sense, as the search engine needs a way to assess the company’s location. Google assesses authority in local search not just by links. Reviews and citations (references of a business’s address or a phone number online) highlight its authority too. Finally, the information a business includes in Google My Business — the search engine’s platform for managing local business listings — plays a huge part in its rankings. The above is just the tip of the iceberg. But they are the ones to get right first if you want your business to rank well. Call Swift Digital Marketing Agency Today at (216)339-6041.
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