How SEO Works
How SEO Works
I’ve never met someone who doesn’t like winning, have you?
Many reasons drive individuals to start a business but on the top of the list – to be successful.
How many times have you gotten frustrated? You’ve invested in a state of the art website; you developed an awesome product or service
But-
You struggle to drive prospective clients to your website and business. Sounds familiar?
There’s a strategy to winning so let me give you the secrets to what is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In essence, how to get the right business prospects to find you online.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Let’s start with an example. You’re interested in finding a pizza shop. You go online and enter the term “pizza shop near me” in the Google search bar. The top listings appear from the search with ads next to it and below, are other valuable results.
What Google did was to brag about or ranked the websites it gave you as suggestions because they are legitimate.
Google also looked at your current location, where you logged in from and gave you an excellent match based on the keywords you entered.
Google is playing matchmaker. That in a nutshell is Search Engine Optimization.
How does SEO help Small Business Owners?
Every small business owner seeks to expand their business by getting new clients right? It’s impossible in this digital space to stay afloat if consistent traffic isn’t coming to your website from people that are searching for your product or service.
New sales calls and inquiries not just old listings or referrals from your existing clients should make you excited and that’s where Google comes in. Bonus points, Google drives traffic to your website for free! Don’t get me wrong, there are other search engines but the greatest of them all is Google.
Most persons run to Google to fix a problem or get advice so you certainly want to position your business as the problem solver.
Here are four (4) tips to make Google consider your website as a solution to its users’ issues:
1. Website Security and Accessibility:
Connectivity:
Google is like a mother eagle that protects her eaglets. There’s no way it will send users to a website that is potentially harmful and worse, very hard to navigate.
No one likes dysfunction. If your website takes centuries to load and has the speed of a turquoise, Google will avoid you.
Similarly, most persons go online from their mobile devices these days. If your website is only desk-top friendly, please upgrade, I am asking nicely for your interest only.
Domain’s Newness:
If your domain is new, Google will be checking you out more than a guy that sees a potential date at a club. Google has trust issues and will be checking for things like:
- Broken links
- Inappropriate content
- Redundant content
- Non- genuine or duplicated products
- Plagiarism- If you took information or articles from other websites and call it yours.
If you haven’t met the requirements of being legitimate and sound, Google will not rank you in its SEO.
Time Spent on your Website:
Let me tell you a secret. If your average visitor spends only five seconds on your website, without going through and clicking on pages, it’s not a good indicator for Google. No matter what you do, you will not be ranked.
You want to develop your website and make it interesting enough for a visitor to click, read, and stop by long enough to indicate to Google that your website offers substance or great content.
This forces Google’s hand in the SEO ranking process. Bonus tip, you can get this information as well from Google Analytics.
2. Social Media Presence
If you are looking for clients, it’s only smart that your clients have access to you at any time right?
Google analyses how often you interact with people through your posts and engagement.
They look at:
· Social media growth
· Number of likes
· People’s comments
· How often you post
Google checks for consistency so you want to have a system for posting e.g. once every two weeks or once a month around the same time. If you don’t have a social media presence, now is the time to create your accounts.
Bonus tip:
It’s wise to interact with some of the largest businesses or websites linked to Twitter or Facebook. That way, you can tap into a larger audience and authenticate your online presence.
3. What Others Are Saying About You
Most people hate when others gossip about them but what about a compliment?
I appreciate a good compliment and Google does too.
Google pays attention to:
· Yelp reviews and how often you receive five-star ratings
· If your business name is in a negative or positive light
· If your website was flagged for spam or inappropriate content.
Customers are not afraid to be honest about your product or service and Google listens. This helps Google with the SEO so aim to be on Google’s good side.
4. Online Link Building
Have you ever been on a site and there are links that lead you to another website? That’s essentially what this is about.
It’s great when high quality, established and legitimate websites refer your site via a link for example in their blog post.
It helps with Google trusting you because if others are recommending traffic to you, the least Google can do is help them.
The opposite is also true. If the websites referring you are shady or below a domain authority of ten according to what Google considers a good website, then Google will out rule you by negative association
Just because, you’ve been of great company, I’ll tell you this as well:
Get to know how your competitors are being ranked and from there you’ll know which keywords to use to compete with them.
You can use tools like Spyfu or SEM Rush graphs. This gives you a competitive advantage because you’ll be allowed to play at their weakest points and also maximize your strengths.
I hope you learned more about Search Engine Optimization and feel free to like or comment below to let me know how SEO is working for you.