- If you've done research on how to increase traffic to your website, you've probably seen everybody talking about "Improve your SEO" on your site.
What is SEO: does that really mean?
Seo stands for Search Engine Optimization or just how easy it is for Google to find your website. Now there are several different search engines out there. You have things like Bing and Yahoo, Yandex but 90% of searches are done on Google.
So that's usually what we're talking about when we say search engines and basically, search engines just go out and scour the web to find pages and index them in their catalog. It's very similar to when you have a book and at the end of the book, you have an index where it tells you where everything was talked about and the location.
- That's pretty much Google and their indexing system as well on the web in the cloud.
How does Google determine what gets on the first page or search results?
The biggest factor is relevancy. You want to make sure that your website is exactly what the searcher is looking for when they're searching Google. Now Google uses over 200 factors to determine what's relevant in their algorithms and there's no way that we're going to be able to cover all of those but if we can concentrate on a few then we have a fighting chance to get seen in the search results.
Is your site useful to the searcher?
In addition to relevance, you'll also want to make sure that your site is useful. All that means is that when a user clicks on your site, the information that they're looking for is easily found. Think about the last time you did a search. If you went to a page that you thought had the answer but you had a hard time finding it on the page, did you stick around? Most people will click back and go look for a different answer. So make sure that your site is also useful and that you've arranged the answers for the topic in a meaningful way that's easier for readers to find what they're looking for.
Two ways to work on SEO for your website.
So there are two main ways that you can work on SEO on your website and they're called on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO is simply telling Google and the reader that you have everything that they're looking for. You have all the indicators that they're looking for and really, this just means you have all the right keywords on your site. Now, on-page SEO is easier to deal with because most of the changes needed are within your control.
For instance, if your site is is about barbeque then you want to make sure that your site has the right keywords in the title, in the body, in the image descriptions, it also means you have supporting keywords.
Off-Page SEO, that simply means that you are making sure that other websites are linking back to you. These are called backlinks. Off-Page SEO is a little bit more out of your control because you're relying on other people to believe that your site is worthy of a link but if you're writing great content and networking with your industry or your topic area then it shouldn't be a problem.
- Now I just want to let you know, as we go through this SEO process, just realize that search engine optimization does take time, and sometimes it can be a little frustrating when you're not seeing the results fast. But if done properly, the results from your SEO efforts can last months or even years depending on the topic you're in. So now that you know a little bit about what SEO is and how it can improve the traffic on your site.
