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You might have heard of search engine optimization in blogs, YouTube videos, talks, from digital entrepreneurs and more. SEO is basically shorthand for search engine optimization.
It's all about where a website ranks when searched in search engines like Google. It has similar meanings in the context of business.
Through SEO people using the search engines will see your site at the top of the list. There are actually a few different strategies for SEO, but there’s one strategy that nearly every business uses.
That strategy is social media marketing. By having a presence on all major social networks, you expand your audience. People who follow you have access to your content, so if they like what they find, they should go back to your page.
You can also join other communities about similar topics as well. Participating in these groups makes you seem familiar with them, which may help you gain customers.
Search engines today don’t just look at domain names and simple markup to determine which page is most relevant for a given keyword search. HTML 5 makes it easier for websites to support both basic and advanced features of the web, from browsing to online shopping to detailed searching capabilities.
HTML 5 allows sites to work more efficiently. By applying certain tags inside the content area of each page, developers can emphasize particular words or phrases as well as provide additional information about what’s being described.
These enhanced links create a richer experience for users, simulating the way a browser works. In addition, if you use semantic markup, other systems will understand how to connect pages together and find things like titles, abstracts, and metadata.
Here are some reasons why doing this helps with SEO:
When someone searches for info on one topic, he may also be interested in another topic related to it. Semantic markup tells the spelling machine (and human) that these topics are connected, and the spelling engine should take into account the relationships between them.
For example, if I search for "buy bread", related items will appear below such as "bread products", "baking recipes", "food ingredients". Items with similar keywords tend to lead to navigation back to the home page, whereas longer descriptive terms stay after they have less relevance.
The better structured the website, the higher the ranking. Linking directly to specific pages within the site increases its popularity, engagement, and overall interest rate. With html 5, the pages are able to carry away broader semantics, while the sitemap itself becomes smarter and looks better.
Now let’s talk about SEO for your business. The first thing to understand is that SEO is an ongoing effort that requires constant attention to keep your results moving forward.
Google updates its algorithm every 6 weeks, making it impossible to stay ahead of the game by doing nothing.
An excellent way to understand SEO is by looking at where titles, descriptions, links and other content live online. These are called pages, elements or assets, and they all have the same purpose — to help people find more information about what you offer, from how to use your product to whether it’s any good.
By having well written and linked content online, you can increase both the number of people who come to your site from Google searches and the amount of money they spend once on your website.
It’s obvious that you need to have good content to draw readers into your website, but that isn’t enough by itself. You also have to make it easy for people to find your content.
If you write an article or a blog post, you have to provide links to other articles or blogs posts. People might come to your site because they need information or services, but they will not try clicking through pages of text to find out if you don’t put some hooks in there to click.
You want people to know what you’re offering before they ask for a quote or number one item on your list.
Content is key, but so are tags and social media connections.
These tips aren’t hard to do; we just don’t pay much attention to them. By paying more time and effort towards improving your content, linking to other sites, and using tags, you can quickly get closer to the top of search results.
Google claims that content is king, which means that the company wants webmasters to focus on providing quality content.
Once you start getting ranked, all of the keywords that you worked hard to establish will begin bringing in traffic. The problem is how to know which keywords are going to bring in money and what is the competition for them.
In paid advertising like pay per click (pay per click=ppc) advertisements directly inside the search results list or banner ads, there is usually quite some competition because many companies are paying to get listed.
For organic listings such as the top 3 ranking positions (the title of your article), the competition is somewhat lower due to less competition. However, the best position according to seo standards is number 1, so you still need to work hard to get ahead in the rankings.
It is impossible to tell whether your website will rank for a specific keyword it has no idea about. If you want people to actually find out if your site is worth visiting, then you’ll have to let other websites with this term in their name take over for a while.
If they don’t care for it, it can be deleted later from the internet archives once everyone finds out about it. For now, it’s just taking up space within our tech world.
Most people know that having a proper, readable URL is an important factor in getting traffic to your website. However, you may not be aware of some of the hidden issues with your site’s url.
If your domain name has been around for a while, it’s a good idea to start using correct url grammar. You also want to make sure that your url code is clean and easy to follow.
This will help improve your web performance which is associated with better search engine rankings.
Here are all the things you should take into account when designing a great looking URL:
The format should be hyphenated (or underscore) and unique. Make sure that each directory within your site has a unique name. This helps identify them more clearly to your visitors and makes navigating easier by reducing unnecessary clicks.
Search engines respect forward slashes but don’t use backward slashes as delimiters. Directories can have forward or backwards slash separators depending on your setup.
Make sure that every page on your site uses both upper and lower case letters.
Your homepage, about us page, and category pages should all include keywords. Without going overboard, you should add relevant keywords throughout your site to promote relatedness.
Hyperlinks must appear visually, so color coding works well. You can also use underlining, bolding, or fonts other than “web standard” font colors.
Consider creating aliases for long URLS. An alias is a shorter form of a given URL that points to the same location. For example, we could create an alias for the original longer URL.
Let’s say the original longer URL was www.example.com/products/file-sharing? Then the alias might be called www.example.com/files/product-liability-assessment-.
These short versions save time for users who are searching for products and services online. It also saves branding information from being displayed in searches, making it a good way to provide official content.
Of all the types of HTML tags, the h1 tag is by far the most powerful. It’s located at the top of the page (or sometimes below the title) and defines a major key idea.
If you have a homepage or portfolio section with many items, it’s best to use the h1 tag to highlight one feature or collection item. You can then use additional h2 and h3 tags to expand on that topic further.
For example, if you have a food blog, you might want to use the h1 tag to call out one recipe like “ how to make delicious cookies ”. Then you could use the h2 tag to explain why they are called that name and what ingredients go into making them. And finally, you could use the h3 tag to describe their nutritional value.
In business, we often see the opposite happening. There are hundreds of keywords used to sell products but only a few real words used to sell services. By using the right tags to promote your content, people will be able to find you more easily.
Search engines reward websites that provide useful, informative content to their users. More recently, search engines have added “mobile” usage, measuring how fast you can navigate between pages and features within a site.
However, if you rely only on your website to promote yourself, you run the risk of being left behind as competitors publish new sites and update old sites with more media coverage and attention-getting events.
It’s also important to consider posting times. If you write an article describing a business occasion, try pointing people towards your article within one week after the event!
Content creates demand for products and services. It helps customers understand what you offer and decide whether it is right for them. With all of the different directions you could be going, there are lots of ways to create good content.
The most popular way currently is using Facebook groups. The topics attract discussions, and people will share posts with each other. You also can use Twitter groups or Google plus groups to get the same result.
These days, everyone has a social profile identified by a unique email address, so creating group messages isn’t much harder. Just ensure they include some valuable information and don’t waste time on promotional materials.
Rather than having many members who rarely participate, encourage conversations and debates to keep things lively. And since people love talking about themselves, this approach can work even without marketing benefits.
Search engine optimization (SEO) makes it easier for visitors to find your content online. By writing original articles shared via social networking channels and niche publications, you can increase the likelihood that your content will reach thousands of potential readers.
But you need resources to put into promoting your content, through both traditional and unconventional methods.
