SEO can be complicated but the concept itself is easy. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is optimizing your website to search engines. It sounds simple, right? It’s the hard part, actually doing it. Because the rules change constantly and you may not know the basics, this is the difficult part. You’ve probably searched for SEO company Toronto in the past. There were approximately 19,000,000 results.
- Do This
- This is a terrible idea
- Always do this on Tuesday
- Don’t Do It, Everybody Is Doing It
- You Did This, But Now It’s All Wrong. So do it this way now
It can be frustrating and make SEO seem impossible to win. You can win it. We’ll keep it simple in this post and give you an introduction to the basics of SEO. You should now have a good understanding of SEO, its importance, and the steps you can take to be found by potential clients.
Why is SEO important?
Let’s begin with some trivia. In 1997 approximately 1 million websites were. The number of websites was approximately 1 million in 1997. In 1998, it jumped to 2.4 million. In 2000, 17 million websites were in existence. Twenty years later, almost two billion websites are still in existence.
What is the point?
A search can be initiated by anyone who goes to Google or Bing. This person can reach potentially a billion websites and exponentially more pages.
The Internet is vast and expanding, just like the Universe. Without SEO, you will be lost in the Internet Universe’s outer regions. Your website can be found thru search engines. But, if no one sees it, is it truly there?
It’s not.
SEO ensures that your target audience is able to find your website through a relevant search.
It’s not sufficient just to have a website.
- Trust search engines.
- Your content should be appealing to your target audience.
- You have attached keywords that match search terms.
Let’s look at what it means.
Search Engines Trust You
Search engines have been damaged by unscrupulous marketers in the past who managed to trick search engines into showing their sites.
You may have overheard the terms “white-hat SEO” and “black-hat SEO” in the past. Black hat SEO is the misuse of the system to cheat. Unrelated keywords can be buried in your website’s body. What is the result? The result? When searching for elephants in Africa, the searcher lands on a website that deals with bed linens.
Black hat SEO is the practice of repeatedly repeating the same phrase on your website to prove that it is focused on a particular topic. Although you may want to rank higher, the end result can be a bad experience for your visitors.
Black-hat SEO is about manipulating search engines at the expense of your actual visitors.
White hat SEO is the approach to appealing to humans rather than search engines. This is the recommended approach by Google, Bing, as well as all major search engines, when creating content for your website.
Over the years, search engines have developed more intellectually. Let’s take Google as an example. Google is getting more sophisticated with each update. Google not only understands more about the intent behind a search query but it also knows which websites are most likely to provide a satisfactory solution to that query. This is why some websites are promoted while others are not.
Although no one can tell you the secret ingredients of Google’s secret sauce we do know that website content should be designed for users. Google is all about user experience. It wants searchers to find the most relevant answer quickly and without any friction. It’s important to keep your site human-friendly, not search engine-friendly. Google will only accept sites that include basic elements.
- Content that is human-friendly and provides complete and accurate answers to all possible questions
- Regular updates of fresh content
- Keyword-rich title tags that tell search engines about your page.
- A meta description that is keyword rich and provides more detail about your topic appears under the title and link on the search engine result page (SERP).
- Search engines can understand your website’s “big picture” by using internal links
- Sitemaps are used to help search engine web crawlers navigate your site
- Search engines can’t read JavaScript and Adobe Flash (which aren’t readable by search engines).
- Mobile-friendliness: More users now access the Internet via mobile devices than desktops
- Your pages should include descriptive elements and other attributes
Make Content that Attracts Your Target Audience
You may be shocked to hear that search engines don’t care about creators or website owners. Every major search engine company is focused solely on giving its users the best possible answer to their questions.
If search engines returned poor results for users’ queries, users would become frustrated and lose trust in the engine. They might eventually move to a better search engine.
Once you have a better understanding of the motivations behind search engine companies, it is time to create content that answers the query. Consider all the questions that your potential customer might have. To make this happen, it’s necessary to map the buyer’s journey from awareness to consideration to the customer to referral resource.
Your buyer’s journey might look something like this if you own a mattress store:
- Is it time for a new mattress? (Awareness)
- What are the differences between different types of mattresses? (consideration)
- Why choose this mattress company instead of the others? (Customer)
- This mattress is the best choice. (referral source)
In an ideal world, you will create content for every milestone in the buyer’s journey. Each milestone could have multiple pieces of content that push the buyer to the next step on the journey.
Use keywords that match search queries
Your SEO will not be helped by a website that only contains your company name, address, and contact information. It is important to create content that appeals to potential customers and convinces these people to consider you.
Keywords can help you be found by your target audience. Keywords should be used in your content to match the queries of potential customers. This means that if your target audience is searching for “handcrafted Amish furniture”, then you should include the keyword phrase in your content.
Long tail keywords are the most powerful keywords. Long tail keywords include two or more words that limit the number of queries for which you can rank. You might be thinking, “I want more traffic.” Consider this: Long tail keywords are better for bringing in quality traffic, as they allow users to be more specific about what they’re searching for. This is the difference between “shoes” and “hiking shoes” (long-tail keyword). You’ll receive fewer queries but those that you get will likely be your target audience.
Our SEO company Toronto, We are here to help
Do you need help optimizing your website for search engines like Google? Auctus Marketing is happy to assist. We can help you drive more visitors to your website as SEO professionals. Not just any traffic, but traffic that converts into customers. Let’s schedule a time to chat or call us.