SEO or search engine optimization refers to the work you can do to make your website easier for people to find online.
When someone types in certain words or phrase into a search engine we call them keywords or key phrases and they get back a long list of result.
It is very common that most people hardly ever click past page 1. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, they just start from scratch with a new search rather than clicking through endless result pages.
7 out of 10 persons will click on the first 3 results from the organic results; the ones that show up under the paid ads.
Google, and all major search engines, have created an extremely sophisticated formula to determine where on the search results page your site appears.
AND YOU NEED TO DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO BOOST YOUR RANKING.
These are the top 5 SEO techniques:
Technique 1: Keywords
SEO used to be straight forward. You simply pick a keyword you wanted your site to rank high for, put it in all the content of your site and watch your position on search results sky rocket.
The more the keywords appeared on your site, the more the page high ranked.
Nowadays, using keywords appropriately is less about frequency and much more about relevancy.
While you still want to include keywords on your site, it’s more important to utilize them in a relevant content: high quality articles and pages that are useful and legitimate and add value for your visitors and speak well about your website. Focus on making your content match the needs of your customers.
Technique 2: Backlinks
“Backlinks” is a fancy word for links to your site that originate from another source. These links from other websites to yours can come from news articles to social media posts.
But keep in mind, the quality of your link source matters. The more influential and legitimate the website is that links back to yours, the more positive effect that backlink will have on your overall search result ranking.
Technique 3: Site Security
If you own an E-commerce website, you don’t want people making a purchase on your website, worry about their identity being stolen or credit card being compromised. People don’t like to use websites that aren’t safe to use; and neither does Google.
To optimize your position on search results consider installing an SSL Certificate. It works to encrypt any data communicated between your website and visitors. Data like usernames, passwords and credit card information are protected.
Technique 4: Social Media
Your social influence matters a lot. 1 out of every 4 people of the entire world is using social media. That’s over 2 Billion people. Just like with “backlinks”, sites that are more popular and relevant on social media are given more credibility and therefore higher ranking.
So if your brand is retweeted by the president, search engines will take notice and boost your site’s ranking.
Technique 5: Mobile Friendliness
It’s very important to ensure your website displays well on mobile devices.
Heard of “Mobilegeddon”? It’s the term web developers coined for the day when mobile friendliness became a critical factor in Google’s search engine algorithm.
29% of all search queries are made on mobile devices.
Starting 2015, Google expects your site to be as easy to use on the phone as it is on the computer. The easiest way to do this is to make your site responsive; meaning it adjusts to fit any size screen automatically.
You can build an amazing website and still be ranked lower on the search results compared to your competition if you’re not making it easy for smart phone users to navigate.
Good SEO doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. But the sooner you start, the sooner you start climbing up the results ladder.
And as long as you have your domain name, you can start your SEO efforts, even before your website is finished.
C.A.M.