The ABCs of SEO: How to Get Started
Search engine optimization is the science of optimizing your website to increase visibility in search engine results pages.
SEOs base their strategies on what experts have figured out about how Google ranks websites and what Google has communicated through direct guidance. The final goal is to appear as high as possible in Google’s results for those vital queries for your website.
A query is a string of words people use to find something in a search. For example, “Stop a leaky faucet”. If you’re a plumber, you’d want to appear at the top of these search results.
Google is by far the most critical search engine for most businesses. Nearly 85.53% of search traffic comes through them.
Why Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Important?
Delivers Consistent, High-Quality Traffic
Being at the top of a critical search result is a gamechanger for any business. You do not have to pay for every click. And the people who find you are looking for what you offer now.
Cuts Acquisitions Costs
Over time, SEO helps you cut your customer acquisition costs. That’s because you achieve perfect timing with your ideal customers. You’ll experience higher conversion rates, more awareness, more leads, and more sales for less cost. You can often cut back on paid advertising as your search ranking improves.
Builds Trust with Google and People
Google and your audience see all of these positive interactions. This builds authority and credibility. As a result, Google will rank you even higher and you’ll get even more traffic. It’s the snowball effect!
Increases brand visibility
As SEO puts your website above any other, it will help your brand gain exposure to your target audience and reach potential customers interested in your products and services.
Long-term SEO Is for Winners
It’s important to realize it takes time to reach the top of searches. Anything that gets you quick results will also hurt your website.
So ideally, you’ll create a comprehensive marketing strategy by combining SEO with PPC (such as Adwords), and social media.This allows the strengths and weaknesses of each to complement each other. It drives your success.
What are the 3 pillars of SEO?
If you are new to implementing SEO strategies for your business, it may sound overwhelming with many different sources. Don’t worry. Let us help you. In a nutshell, SEO fundamentals can be summarized into three core phases: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and content.
On-page SEO: Improving Website Experience
The first thing to consider when optimizing a website for SEO is the on-page part. This involves technical SEO fixes that your website should perform to increase performance on search engines. Search engines will pay attention to these factors and determine if they provide an ideal experience to users. Page experience is a crucial aspect nowadays as it will determine if users spend time looking at your website.
Some optimizations include:
- Improving Web page navigation
- Site structure
- Speed
- Ease of the checkout process
- Aesthetics
- Analyzing and monitoring website performance and user experience to continually improve and optimize
- Submitting an XML sitemap to Google Search Console
- Update the robots.txt file
- Optimizing meta descriptions, title tags, alt tags, and headers for your target keywords
- Internal link building
By optimizing the elements mentioned above, you will increase your website’s performance score and improve the chances of appearing in organic search results.
Off-page SEO: Building Authority and Relevance
For websites to rank higher on search engine result pages, they must put some effort into increasing their authority and relevance. This is achieved through off-page SEO strategies. Websites considered authoritative and relevant sources are prioritized over low-authority pages. To do this, you should do the following:
- Keyword research based on queries people use to find a site like yours
- Performing a competitive analysis
- Creating the right content around those queries
- Distributing that content around the Internet through social media, influencers, paid advertising, etc.
- Networking with reputable websites and people who publish on reputable websites, such as business owners, journalists, and influencers, reliable directories
- Avoiding shady partnerships and quick results SEO schemes that can earn website penalties and harm businesses permanently.
- Analyzing performance to improve and optimize continually.
- Integrating SEO with PPC and social media into one cohesive digital marketing strategy.
- Building external links to other relevant sources
- Creating a backlink strategy
Content: The fuel of Digital Marketing
Not surprisingly, content is what will keep your website up and running. Search engines determine which pages should rank higher based on the quality of content they produce. The objective of creating content is more than just stuffing keywords together. In fact, this might get your website penalized by Google. If you want your website to appear at the top of Google Search results, ensure you are producing content that helps users with their problems. By creating quality content, you also increase the chances of getting your content shared and building a backlink. Perform keyword research to determine what search queries is your target audience looking for.
Once you have identified relevant keywords for your website, create content in different formats, such as blog posts, ebooks, social media content, or emails. Valuable content will help you improve organic traffic for your web pages. Make sure to include a link to your website in each content piece to ensure that users keep coming back for more.
It’s important to note that optimization is all of these things. If even one of these is off, your website won’t be fully search engine optimized. That’s why we encourage you to learn more about how we help clients increase quality traffic to meet marketing KPIs and business goals through SEO.
We know this might feel overwhelming if you have no experience in SEO, but don’t worry! We are here to help. At REALTOP, we have a team of experts to help you formulate the best SEO strategy for your business. Get your free marketing plan today and start noticing the
Nik Tsoukales, founder of REALTOP, is an experienced digital marketer with a track record of growing businesses and sales teams. He has received multiple awards for leading fast-growing companies and specializes in organic SEO, Google PPC, and Social Media. With over 89k clients acquired online, Nik’s expertise spans various industries including finance, healthcare, and real estate.