Confused about S.E.O.? Watch this brief SEO crash course video to get an overview of search engine optimization, and what it’s all about.
SEO Crash Course
SEO Hinges on 3 Things
- Keywords
- Links
- Content
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) brings organic traffic to your website. Good SEO improves your Google rank. This means you appear in the top search results for certain search terms.
You need to make sure your content includes keywords, or search terms, which relate to your business. These keywords are what Google uses to determine your relevance during searches.
There are several ways to find good keywords, but the easiest is to use Google’s keyword planner.
Links help establish relationships between your content and others. Always include links to other content on your website. This helps a visitor navigate the information you have available to them. Also, consider adding links to quality data sources. Never link to a competing website.
Your content plays a big part in your Google rank. Preference is given to in-depth, helpful material. Make sure all your published content is properly formatted and uses keywords. The only way the search engines have to categorize your material is with those keywords.
In days gone by, certain websites tried to cram as many keywords into their articles as possible. Today, that hurts your rank. It is only necessary to include them a few times, in strategic places. Google looks for those words and takes clues from the surrounding text to determine the topic of your article.
SEO Is a Long-Term Strategy
There is a difference between SEO and search engine marketing (SEM). With SEM, you pay for rank. It is good in the short-term for generating website traffic, but costs significantly more in the long-term and has less staying power. SEO takes longer to develop, but once it’s in place, it generates traffic for very little cost.