An Intro to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is SEO and why should you care about it? Well, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In other words it represents a series of practices one has to engage in to be relevant on the World Wide Web. Well, you should care because no matter what type of business you are involved with being found and being patronized is one way to stay relevant and profitable.

SEO is how Google ranks websites in its search engine. If you are profitable company with a lot of traffic you move up on the search engine. It would even make sense for a lot of other companies to advertise through you and you can earn extra income from that. Whoever complained about a little extra money? Even if you weren't motivated by the extra income it’s still safe to say you would love for your company to be found. As far as SEO goes there isn't one magic thing you can do to improve your rankings. The rankings aren't permanent either. So, periodically a company might move up or down.

Here are a few practices that can help to improve one’s SEO: Adding Keywords in your Meta tags at the back end of your website (This won’t make sense to you if you are not a designer), writing an interactive blog, back linking to your site from other sites etc. There are more practices out there. However, this article should be viewed more as a crash course in SEO for those of us not deeply rooted in the technological practices.

Meta tags and Keywords

At the back end of a web design, there’s usually a form box that is titled “Meta tags” In this box you want to list all the keywords that pertain to your business. So, for example if you are florist you might want to list the state you are located in, your company name, types of flowers you have etc. In short anything that would pop up and point to you when someone goes on Google or other search engines to look up your services. Be sure to separate each of those words with a comma.

Blogging

Blogging has become a very good way of getting traffic to a site. The rule here is that your content should be engaging and relevant to your site. So, if you are a florist in my earlier example you could write about why it’s best to plant seeds in the late fall so that by spring they are in bloom or how bees being killed off due to pesticides is affecting the cost of roses. I am sure you catch the drift. A few things to know about blogging is that (1) controversial or helpful articles tend to generate more interaction between readers or you and the readers (2) You want to have keywords sprinkled into your blog so that the Google spiders that pick up on those keywords will do just that. The more keywords you have on your site the better. However, you can just over-do it. (3) make sure that your designer includes features into your blogs that allow people to comment. (4) Have your designer include an opt-in form for people to sign up and receive newsletters on your blog. If you want to get in-depth into it you can also attach an Auto Responder such as Mail Chimp which gathers the names and e-mails of your subscribers. It also lets you schedule future posts. (5) Link your blog to your social media pages such as Facebook and Twitter.

Back Linking

The way back links work is to have a link from another site link back to yours. One of the ways you can achieve this is to write a column or a blog for reputable website and include a link on that site that goes back to yours. Hopefully, you can write something that mentions your site name. Be sure to make sure that your site name is a word that is an actual link that people can click on. The more people click on that link to go to your site. The more relevant Google sees that your site is. However, it’s best to have this practice on several other sites pointing back to yours. Otherwise, eventually Google will see that your source is coming from only one place which means your site isn't very relevant after all.

Now that you’ve learned a little about SEO, you are now better informed and can sound a bit more knowledgeable at the next social gathering with those talking about such things. Perhaps, you have now realized how you can improve upon your site traffic, because frankly speaking it’s no longer just good enough to have a fancy website that’s not generating any income for your business. Still, with this knowledge you might be too busy to find time to invest in such a thing. So, what can you do? Well, you can always hire an informed designer like Uzo Design to handle your website needs or you can hire a blogger to write on your site.