We’ve all heard this before… Location, Location, Location! The single most important thing to consider when starting your business. This is a term used for a typical brick and mortar business, but it also applies to your online business. It is imperative that the location of your business is visible in the search engine rankings to stay competitive.
There are a lot of things to consider when you begin to investigate Search Engine Optimization or (SEO). SEO has been a popular topic for a long time and it is forever changing. SEO basically is the process or technique that is used to improve your rankings in the search engines (Google, Bing, and so on). There is not a single way to do this, but a combination of things.
What things you ask? These things include what you do on your website and what you do off of your website.
Is it important how you make your website? You bet it is! There are lots of stuff you need to do on you website that will help you with you SEO. Using some of these “free” website builders can really hurt you more than help you. Why would you build a physical or an online store that no one will see? The “free” sites may be “free” or “free” upfront, but it won’t help you in the end. There are so many limitations or restrictions when it comes to these kinds of sites.
We use WordPress and it is a wonderful thing. It is very popular and millions of businesses are running on the WordPress Platform and it continues to grow every day. You can install it for free, use one of many free themes that are out there, or create your own.
There are better themes than others. Make sure you are picking a theme that is SEO friendly and one that is compatible with a WordPress SEO plug-ins. These plug-ins can immensely help you with your SEO. They are designed for that purpose.
While you are getting your hands dirty with keyword research and adding those keywords to your website, keep in mind that your website being ranked in the search engines is not the only thing to consider.
Did you know…
Each one of your pages and blog posts are ranked individually for their own keyword.
That’s right! Many people are not aware of or even think about that when they are adding things on their website. It is always a good idea to pick a keyword and write around that anytime you publish something new. Try to put the keyword in the first sentence of your new page and mention it a couple times.
I wish I could tell you that’s all it takes to move on up on Google, but I can’t. There is so much more that would require more blog posts or even a training class session. Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when this is available to you 🙂
What do I have to do outside of my website as far as SEO is concerned? We can touch on this some.
The search engines (Google) like to see who is an authority in their niche. They like to look at your website for useful content that would benefit the consumer and also new content that is added. Social media drives traffic to your website. Having a good foundation of followers that are interactive with your business on social media helps tremendously.
Being mentioned in other blogs, news articles, and anywhere on the internet helps. All of these things that create backlinks to your website helps. Not artificial backlinks, but concrete backlinks from a “Google” approved authoritative figure.
The combination of the above will definitely get you rolling in the right direction. All you have to do is create quality content and share it. The more you do this, the more exposure you have. Remember, each page you published is ranked.
I hope this finds some people and gives them a better understanding about SEO. It is not even close to an entire guide to SEO, but it does scratch the surface.
Mike