A Beginner’s Guide to SEO

In today’s world, your online presence is just as important, if not more, than your physical presence. People rely on search engines to help them find the answers to all of their questions and needs. Luckily for businesses, search engines provide the answers that people are looking for. How do you make sure that your website is being seen by the people who need it most? That’s where SEO comes in.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization. Still unsure of what that means? Well, in the simplest form, it is the process that determines where your site ranks among search engine results. Why does this matter so much, you ask? It has been shown that nearly all site traffic stays on the first page of the search results. Most people only click on one of these results. So, if you want your website to see the light of day, you need your listing to be placed highly on the first search results page.

How does it work?

Search engines have the goal of providing people with the best results possible. In order to ensure these results, they pick the websites and specific webpages they feel are the most informative to be at the top of the search results. How do you make sure that your website ranks in the top three results? There are a few factors that determine what search engines look for in websites when deciding if they are the “best.” These include your site traffic, keywords, your website’s accessibility, and the accuracy and clarity of your information. There are other ways to improve your SEO, but websites that answer people’s questions quickly are the ones that find themselves at the top of search engine results.

Why is it so important?

Having strong SEO is equally important for both businesses and consumers. On the business side, websites launch with the goal of reaching the largest possible number of future customers. SEO benefits companies by helping expose their websites to more traffic. Strong SEO leads to more site traffic, which hopefully leads to a successful business. On the consumer side, SEO does the work for them by allowing consumers to find answers to their questions as quickly as possible. SEO controls which websites will show up first, and these will be the pages consumers will trust to find information.

What should YOU be doing?

Now that you understand what SEO is, what steps should you be taking to ensure your site is optimized? For starters, it is extremely important that your site is user friendly and easy to navigate. Next, it is vital that you have direct answers to what people are searching for. If someone searches for a solution to a problem and your site pops up, they will want to find the answer on your landing page, rather than having to navigate through your other website pages for it. Lastly, ensuring you have high quality, legitimate information will lead to a large amount of trust and popularity among consumers.