Search Engine Optimization or SEO is an important term to know in the marketing industry. In a nutshell, SEO is the process of improving the quality of your website and increasing the number of visitors through search results. There is a lot to know about SEO and how to truly optimize your website to climb the search rankings. It can be overwhelming, but the important takeaway with SEO is to have a good balance of everything for your business’ digital presence to hold a strong position on search engines.
To help you better understand the SEO space, these are our 10 must-know tips and facts about SEO to help you learn how to better optimize your website efficiently.
1. SEO isn’t about optimizing your site for search engines…
It’s about optimizing your website for your users. Many people forget this on their way to the top of the search engine rankings. They think that by doing everything by the book and jamming in as many keywords as possible it will get them the results they want. This isn’t the case. If you aren’t optimizing your website with your users in mind, then why will people want to visit your website? The more useful and accessible people find your website, the more search engines will recognize that and place you higher in the search rankings.
2. It’s more than just knowing the right keywords to use.
Yes, keyword research and knowing which keywords to use is important when it comes to SEO. But it’s also about searcher intent & knowing when to use certain phrases and continue researching to see if there are any changes to the popularity of certain words.
3. Don’t take shortcuts, SEO is a marathon, not a race
A big SEO no-no is paying for links or paying a person or service that guarantees you immediate top rankings. By taking shortcuts, you risk getting penalized and banned from getting ranked on search engines completely. Just keep in mind that SEO takes a bit of time to kick in. You’re not going to see results overnight, but over time and with good practice, you will.
4. Your site speed matters
Did you know, that if your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 53% of site visitors will leave? That’s more than half of your audience. A big part of SEO is making sure your website is accessible, easy, and fast to use. If it’s not fast, people are more than likely going to try their luck on a different website.
5. SEO is not just ‘set and forget’
Let’s say you have a website that’s 5 years old, and you decide to do a big website overhaul and modernize your site. That’s fantastic. You’ve updated your content, your website security is the best it can be, and your website speed has increased. But then you just leave it. Your SEO may increase for a little bit, but if you’re not continually adding new content to your site or finding new ways to bring in traffic, that increase will eventually slow down and stop. We recommend reviewing your site’s SEO on a monthly basis because search engines make big changes to their algorithms quickly and their best practices change just as fast. For example with the changes that Google has made in their algorithm (which they use to decide where to rank each site), sites that were built as little as a year ago will need to make a few big changes to bring their site back to best practices.
6. Don’t forget about links
Links are one of the key pillars of good SEO etiquette. One of the things search engines, such as Google, does when evaluating the rankability of your website is its accessibility. Links that help people navigate your website will show Google that your website is helpful and therefore good to place higher in the search rankings. However, the links need to be relevant. If you’re talking about bikes on a page of your website, and a link you provide takes you to a page about ice cream, this will hurt your rankings. It’s about accessibility, but also relevance as well.
7. (Great) content is king
Having content on your website is one thing, but having GREAT content is another. Adding new content to your site in ways such as having a weekly blog post just like this one is a great way to keep your site relevant and useful for your users. The content you write should be either entertaining, informative, or relevant to your users though – so keep that in mind when choosing what to write about and how the topic relates to your business.
8. Social media has a role in SEO
As mentioned above, links are an important tool to show Google and other search engines that your website is important and useful. The more that link appears on the web and is clicked on, the more useful it appears to search engines, therefore making it ‘first-page’ worthy. Social media is a great tool for you to use to share different pages of your website to a larger audience while generating more traffic and attention, therefore giving it an important role in SEO.
9. Your website should be optimized for mobile first.
Despite popular belief, it’s better to optimize your website for mobile first before desktop. Why? One reason is because most people when visiting your website, do so on their phone. Also because when designing the layout of your website, it’s easier to start with mobile then modify it to suit a desktop, than the other way around.
10. SEO can do a lot, but it can’t do everything
Good SEO won’t fix all of your problems and make all of your dreams come true. You can do everything perfectly for SEO best practices but still not get the conversion you want to see. Why? Because SEO is only a stepping stone to a good marketing strategy that converts warm traffic into hot leads.
If you’re ready to take your marketing and SEO strategy to the next level, you’ve come to the right place. At 3SIXTY Marketing Solutions, we are search engine optimization specialists and our team can help you set up not just your website for success, but your marketing strategy as a whole. If you want to see how your website ranks currently and discover what you need to do to improve your SEO, check out the SEO and website audit packages we offer. From SEO and website overhauls to Google Advertising and social media marketing, we can help you do it all and we can save you a ton of time in the process. Give us a call today at 705-252-4180 to set up a meeting to get started. We’ve got all your marketing and SEO needs covered, no prob-llama!
