What is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and is it Still Important?

The Basics – How It Can Help You

SEO sounds complex but it’s really quite simple. It just means how you bring traffic and leads to your business. Back in the day, when you needed a plumber, you went to the Yellow Pages and found one in your area. Now, you use Google instead. A business uses SEO in order to increase its ranking in Google’s search engine. When a potential customer types the keywords or question they need answered into Google’s search bar, Google serves up results that it deems relevant and worthy. The ultimate goal of SEO is situate your website so that it appears at the top of those search engine results. This is the modern-day version of the Yellow Pages. Some businesses leave it up to chance.

They assume that by being open for business and providing quality service, Google will naturally take notice. They’re right that it often happens this way. But if you employ a bit of SEO on your website, you’ll speed up this process and see greater and faster results. Even better, SEO provides a low-cost and in some cases free alternative to advertising. While most forms of online advertising bring you a temporary rush of traffic at a small price, effective SEO can create long-term traffic that doesn’t cost you a thing. Having a website is great, but it’s meaningless if you don’t have web traffic. Traffic is the lifeblood of a business. Traffic from Google can easily be converted from a lead to a buying customer. In this article, we’re going to look at the basics of SEO and get you started bringing leads to your website.

It’s All About What Google Wants

Over the years, some SEO companies have used shady tactics to try to “game” their client’s websites to the top of the listings. The techniques they used were unethical and in some cases went directly against Google’s rules. The result is that these websites were dropped from the Google search results. Google employs complex algorithms in order to find and serve up relevant content. The reason why we focus so much on Google and not so much on Bing, Yahoo or other search engines is that Google’s algorithms are the most advanced.

This is why we all consult “Google University” when we need information. As soon as these unethical SEO experts learned how to game the system, Google changed it. It has constantly updated its algorithms in order to reward websites that offer a good customer experience. Unfortunately, Google’s algorithms are impossible to crack. But what SEO specialists do is look at trends in how their websites perform and draw conclusions on how the algorithms work; or in other words, “what Google likes.” When we do SEO, we focus on Google and what it wants. Give Google what it wants, and it will reward you with a steady stream of traffic for a long time.

So, what does Google want?

It wants a good user experience. It wants content that answers the user’s questions or provides the help they’re searching for. It wants high-quality websites that are relevant to user searches. In other words, value is what counts today. If you can provide that value, you’ll get traffic and qualified leads you can turn into customers. Here are some specific things that we aim for with SEO.

Backlinks

Backlinks are links back to your site from other sites. This is a very old tactic that still works extremely well if done right. To “do it right” means to get real, authentic backlinks from high-traffic sites that are relevant to yours. In the old days, some SEO companies paid for links, swapped links or listed sites on link directories. This got these companies cheap backlinks that came into their sites from junk website sources and eventually they paid the price when Google changed its algorithm to remove them.

To do backlinking right, it has to be real and organic. One backlink strategy is to write guest blog posts for other people’s blogs. You write an informative article that’s helpful to their readers, and in return you get a link back to your site in the bio box. Not only will people click the link to see more of what you have to offer, this will also raise your site’s status in the eyes of Google.

Online Reviews

A relatively recent factor that Google takes into account is online reviews. These are reviews on websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor (although today there are many smaller niche-specific review sites too and you shouldn’t exclude these). Basically, the more online reviews you have, the higher you’ll rank in Google. It’s really easy to make the best of review sites. First, check to see if your business is already listed.

These sites have user-generated content, so users can create a listing for your business if there isn’t one already. If you find one, verify that you’re the owner and claim it. If not, create your own listing. In either case, make sure the profile is fully filled out and accurate. Once you have listings on review sites, encourage your customers (especially the happy ones!) to go over there and leave a review. You can also offer an incentive like a discount or freebie to give your customers a nudge.

Social Sharing

Social sharing is another new factor Google takes into account. This means how often your friends or followers on social media share or otherwise interact with your content there. If your connections are actively sharing your content, this tells Google that there’s something there worth sending traffic to.

To get social sharing going, you should basically connect your website and everything else you do online with your social media profiles. Put social media buttons on your site so that people can like, comment or share easily. Be active on social media and promote your website content, blog posts, videos and sales there. Try to create social media content that gets people talking and interacting.

Website Content

We’ve been discussing off-page SEO, or things you do beyond your website. But there are also on-page SEO techniques that can help. One of the things Google likes in a website is that it’s content rich. This means that there’s plenty of content to read and consume. This keeps visitors on your site and sends the signal to Google that your site’s worth the traffic. Google also likes websites that are updated regularly with fresh content over ones that never change. A good way to do this is to add a blog to your site and regularly post blog content there. Once you gain some readership, you’ll start to see a snowball effect where more readers lead to more traffic, and so on.

Design and Navigation

Some SEO experts claim that certain colors and design features bring more traffic. I seriously doubt that this is true, especially considering that every niche has its own tastes in terms of design. But one thing that certainly helps is designing your site so that it has a simple, intuitive navigation. What this means is that it’s easy for a visitor to look at the top page and understand all the website has to offer. They should be able to find the information they want easily with menus and clear links to other pages.

What About Keywords?

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned keywords. Do keywords still matter? The answer is that yes, they do, but they’re not as all-important as they once were. You should choose a few good high-traffic, low-competition keywords to use naturally on your site, but this just isn’t as big a deal as it used to be. Google now takes into account many more factors and that’s where you should pay the most attention.

Monitoring Your Site Performance

Finally, the last component of good SEO isn’t on-page or off-page SEO, but rather monitoring your site’s performance. You can either use Google’s free Google Analytics, or invest some money in a premium program with more features and advanced reporting. Your analytics program will give you data regarding your site’s SEO performance so that you can make changes. For example, your analytics program may tell you that a certain traffic source is bringing you a great deal of traffic that results in good leads. If this is the case, you know that you need to get more backlinks like this one. Or, you might notice that site visitors stay on one page longer than others. This means the content there is good.

Analytics allow you to track visitor behaviour, and this tells you how well your site is performing. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to search engine optimization. SEO isn’t rocket science and it doesn’t have to be terribly complicated to be effective. Still, there’s a learning curve that’s well worth the time it takes to learn it. But if a small business can learn some of these basic SEO skills and apply them to its website, it can bring a great deal of traffic all without the expense of launching an advertising campaign.