Are you a web site owner in seek of new customers? Are you wondering how can other websites be so popular and have so much traffic, while you are struggling to attract just a few visitors yourself? Don’t worry, there is a scientifically simple explanation for your misfortune. I’ve got one word for you; SEO. It is actually the abbreviation of three words: Search Engine Optimization. In short, this rather straightforward procedure assists in boosting your website to the top and be discoverable by potential customers much more easily.
In case you are an IT or an otherwise technically-oriented person you will probably understand how this works very easily. On the other hand, if you are not familiar with such language, there are several terms you need to know before diving into the mechanics of SEO.
Firstly, we need to distinguish the role of the ‘search sites’ and the ‘search engines’. The first term refers to websites which offer you the chance to search for information on the web. However, all the hard work is done by the ‘search engines’; the biggest and most popular ‘search engine’ is Google. Those collect various pages from the web and assist people to search through all the data they gather to find what they are looking for. Basically, the ‘search sites’ collect the information from the ‘search engines’.
Naturally, the ‘search terms’ are the words or phrases people use when they make a search through the ‘search sites’ or the ‘search engines’ and the ‘search results’ are the findings of those searches, which are otherwise called ‘SERPs’ (Search Engine Results Pages). Yes, it is all about searching! Another term worth mentioning here is the ‘search index’. It is not necessary to go into much detail regarding this. You can just imagine that there are numerous “baskets” from which the engines draw data relating to different subjects, as for example, the ‘local results’, the ‘shopping results’, the news and so on.
Mainly, there are two distinct types of search results a search engine can produce; the organic or natural results and the Paid Per Click (PPC) ads. There are other types of results too but those two are the larger percentage of the results.
With the PPC ads, the case is quite straightforward. You create an advertisement about your business, you post it on the web and you are charged a fixed amount every time a person clicks on it. Those can easily be identified in the search results as they appear before the organic results, and they are marked with a distinct word, such as ‘Ad’ or ‘Sponsored’.
On the other hand, the organic results do not cost a thing to you. Those are the results Google discovers browsing around the web and subsequently offers to people when they make a search. This is where SEO plays an important role. You would definitely get a headache if you attempt to grasp the vast amount of pages and websites that exist on the web today. And you might feel a bit depressed when you realize how minimal chances you have to make your site stand out of the crowd amongst so many sites! In any case, when you use the SEO strategies you will increase your chances of optimizing your site significantly and attract more traffic.
To attract the right people you must use the right words! This is why the keywords you use on your site are crucial and need to be carefully selected in order to have successful results. Imagine if you have a business and you are selling bicycles, but you use no words on your site referring to bicycles. How likely do you think it would be for people to discover your site?
The words you use on your website must have the purpose of attracting a specific group of potential customers or partners, by directly addressing the subject matter of your business./ you need to convey your message loud and clear to your potential customers by using the most suitable words in the right order. Thus, it is necessary to do your homework on your desired customers. Make a research about what people search for, what exact keywords they are using to find businesses like yours, and then use those keywords or phrases all over your site in order to be discoverable more easily. Make a careful selection of the text you add in your website pages, having in mind that the ‘Home’ page is the first one people will see when entering your site. You can even name the pictures you upload on your site with relevant words.
Another equally important element you can use for optimizing your site is the use of links. People do not only find what they want through a direct search in Google but very often they land on a page they are interested in by following a link they saw on other relevant pages. Therefore, it is a good practice to surf around the web and add links directing to your website on other related sites to assist people in finding you. This practice is common for when you guest-blog, for example, on another site or more commonly when you make posts on social media pages, either yours or someone else’s. However, you should bear in mind that many sites do not allow posting links which direct to other sites; so before you start spamming the web with links of your site, you should ask the owners for permission!
All these techniques will boost your website on the top of the search results. Are you wondering how? Well, simply put, when you add lots of relevant content on your website’s pages Google will consider it to be an established and solid website and it will be more visible while searching in the web. When there is less material directing to your website then the chances of finding it becomes vaguer.
In addition to the steps mentioned above, there are also several browser extensions you can add to assist in obtaining more detailed information regarding SEO status about your website, as we as others’. I found SEOquake to be very valuable on the topic. It provides, amongst other, information about each site’s ranking in Alexa, the number of entries in the search engines Google and Bing, and in social media pages and general information about the creation of the site itself.
When you aim at enhancing your business, marketing is a powerful tool you need to use to achieve this. SEO is one of those powerful tools which can boost your website off the roof! You now have the chance to develop your marketing strategies on your own and grow your business to the level you wish.