Search Engine Optimization, more commonly referred to as SEO, is one of the most crucial aspects of marketing. As such, if you’re working to market your blog or your business, you need to know what SEO means and what the rules and ways of SEO success are. While a successful SEO strategy isn’t an exact science, and its practice has been challenged on many fronts throughout the years, knowing the basics is still important to an effective marketing campaign.
SEO refers to the process of making a website more visible on a search engine’s results page. To clarify, a great SEO strategy will put a company’s website at the top of the list on a Google search page, therefore increasing the likelihood that people will visit the site.
When writing your content, spend an equal amount of time on trying to make your content sound as natural as possible, putting SEO at the back of your mind. Overusing keywords, creating weird or unnatural sentences with the hopes of improving SEO, or using unoriginal content can be more detrimental than beneficial to your SEO efforts. Content should always be interesting and engaging, be short and succinct, use keywords wisely, include optimized images with great titles, have headings that are appealing, be formatted in an easy-to-read way, and include relevant links. In fact, you may want to even consider participating in a link exchange, which refers to the process of exchanging links with other relevant websites in order to increase SEO.
While an SEO introduction is a great starting point, as your marketing efforts progress, you may want to consider securing additional SEO tools and services. Often times, search engines themselves will provide these tools and services, such as Google’s Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Google AdWords Keywords Tool, Google Alerts, Google Trends, DoubleClick Ad Planner, Google Page Speed, Google Site Map, and more.
SEO is an important part of marketing in the online world and has many factors that can affect its success. In order to improve your website’s SEO, focus on creating great content, using relevant keywords, linking when appropriate, and always writing content that is creative and original. Additionally, remember that SEO is an on-going process, and doesn’t end as soon as you’ve posted content. Instead, keeping a website relevant and up-to-date by posting new, high-quality content frequently and consistently is equally important.
