SEO 101: Exploring the myth about Search Engine Optimization
By Elizabeth Morales
Vice president of Talita Cumi CR
For so many people, Search Engine Optimization is a foreign concept. It is something you hire someone to handle for your company. Like everything else in your business, you should know the basics of it. We have all seen results when we look for stuff on the web. Some have the word “Ad” meaning that the company is paying that search engine to appear on that prime spot, normally 4 spots at the top and three at the bottom are paid ads.
But, what about all the other stuff in between that does not have the word ‘Ad’? That’s where SEO comes in to play. SEO can easily be explained as the answer to one question: how do I get to be on Page One of Google or Bing, without paying, when people look for my type of business? Think of Search Engines such as Google and Bing having gigantic robots that crawl websites to see what your presence is on the web.
A good place to start is by using the Google Search Console to find out how your website ranks in the Google Index. Lost you? Just Google Search Console and follow the prompts. Start by putting in your website address. You may need you IT person for the following steps; or search for Free online SEO site analysis tool”, here is one:
http://www.webseoanalytics.com/free/seo-tools/web-seo-analysis.php
SEO has two parts: On Page Optimization and Off page Optimization
To have an optimized page make sure your website is not cluttered, it loads fast and people can easily find what they typed in the search box that landed them on your page. For example, if someone found you because they typed ‘commercial loans in New York’, then talk about commercial loans in New York and NOT residential loans in Michigan. Yes, you may offer all kinds of loans in all States, but the main information on that page (people landed at) has to be about their original search: commercial loans in New York. Once on the page then you can capitalize on having the visitor there and have other tabs that read ‘other loans we offer’, ‘other states we offer loans in’, ‘ways to qualify for a loan’, and whatever else you want to add that would spark your visitor’s curiosity and would make your visitor stay. Another very important aspect in ranking high in SEO is about the experience the visitor has on your page.
Does the page load fast? (It should not take more than three seconds). What components of the page are loading, and how long it is taking for each piece to load? Can they easily find what they went in looking for? Is there a call to action (call us, click here for a demo, watch a how-to video)? Is your site mobile friendly (does it look good on your phone, or do you have to use your thumb and index fingers to zoom in)? If you want the easiest way to make sure the site is mobile friendly, buy a template from a place such as templatemonster.com. Make sure you search for a responsive template.
Responsive means mobile friendly. Spend time making sure all your links work, meaning you don’t have any broken links on your site; that would hurt your ranking for sure. Remember that content of your page has to be structured in a way that the search engines want.
What do they want? Special HTML tags (language used by the browser to display the contents of your page). What do people type in to get to your page? That is your job and it is called optimizing keywords. The example above, commercial loans in New York, serves as a great one.
If you don’t know what keywords to optimize, go to your competitors’ website, right click anywhere on it and click on ‘View Page Source’, look for something that reads meta name=“keywords” and all the keywords will be listed there.
When you make changes to your site to optimize a keyword, you can use a keyword tracking tool to keep track of your progress across all search engines. Remember, when you make changes to your site, wait at least 30 days for the search engines to crawl your page and update your ranking.
If after 30 days your changes have not helped or have in fact hurt your site then you should move on with making recommended changes like: adding text to your page that includes the keyword(s) you are trying to optimize for or remove text to give your page more focus on the
keyword you are optimizing.
To have Off-Page optimization you want good links linking back to your site, the more reputable the sites linking back to you the better. Don’t buy backlinks. Yes, they sell them. Bad idea. Google sees right through those. Another part of Off-Page Optimization is your Social Networking presence. Having a lot of ‘likes’ on your social platforms as well as having your content shared a few times also helps with Off-page optimization. That gets interpreted as you are sharing valuable content because people are choosing to share it. Having a blog that you update regularly, once a week, and where you are adding great content will bring a lot of traffic to your website. Doing Press Releases is also a great tool to get a lot of eyeballs on your company. Remember, the name of the game is, how do I bring traffic to my website without paying?
Could you be doing SEO and NOT know it? Sure. If you are on Page One of Google on the organic ranking (not paid ads) then chances are you are sharing awesome content in a blog, interacting with your customers on Social Media, having those customers share your content, and just having a very organic experience on your site. There are so many layers to SEO, but here are a few pages that should answer some questions.
The info you get from these sites when inputting your website is really easy to understand. SEO away!
If you want to know: Go here:
If your website is mobile friendly, https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
What backlinks you have https://ahrefs.com/
How fast your page loads http://www.webpagetest.org/
How your keywords are performing across all search engines