Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a daunting term if you’re unfamiliar with it, but at its core, is something that most businesses with an online presence already do — some are just better than others.
Regardless of your skills behind a computer (or lack thereof), SEO should be one of the first things you and your business take care of when it’s time for you to take your business to the internet. And a lot more is at play than just your website.
What is SEO?
If the name didn’t give it away already, it’s simply optimizing your search engine appearances. When you search something (namely on Google), the results are populated via a curated algorithm. This isn’t just “restaurants near me” or “used vehicle sales,” this is any search query you could type out.
When you do search for restaurants near you, the ones that rank higher on those keywords will populate first, meaning more traffic (or what we call ‘organic search engine’ traffic, since it’s not paid and happens organically) is likely to flow to the tops results’ websites.
Don’t believe us? Check out this study that says over 99% of searchers only look at the first page. Or this one, that goes into more depth, discussing click-through rate (essentially how many people click on your link when they see it).
How you rank at all, and how you rank higher, are based on factors on your website. Think about this — when someone asks you for a recommendation on a car mechanic, you don’t just throw out the name of some random shop you’ve seen on your daily commute (or you do, we don’t judge — just please don’t give us any further recommendations). You suggest the one you’ve been taking your car too; one who’s trusted; one who you know will do good work. That’s the exact same thing search engines do — they put trustworthy, well-established sites at the top of their results. They know how long people generally last on the pages, how often they’re shared from there, and generally how much people trust those results.
How do I optimize?
A good website starts out with an intentional SEO practices. You don’t build a house without a good foundation and go back and fix it later, right? At least not purposely. The same way you can have a company fix a home’s foundation, you can have a company like us come in and fix your SEO and get you on the right track.
There are many things that signal to Google and other search engines that you’re a trustworthy site, an expert in your field, and people will spend more time reading your content than others’. Things like alternate attributes for your images (describing what the image is so Google’s crawlers can understand the image in plain text instead of images; this also helps with readability and accessibility), linking both to other sites for credibility and to your own (as you can see here), and narrowing down keywords and meta descriptions all help to put you at the top of the algorithm, but they aren’t the only factors.
All of that is for naught, though, if you don’t have a way of continuing to signal the algorithm that you’re still in business, you’re still trustworthy, and your website is still one of the best results they can push to the top. And the best way to do that? Well, you’re reading it — a blog.
That’s right. It doesn’t matter if you’re a construction company, a private investigator, or even a realty group, a blog solidifies your standing as a company that can be trusted and recommended in good faith.
While there are common-knowledge SEO rules, and even back-end tools that help web designers check SEO boxes, there are also guides like this one or this one that can help you when you’re looking to do more research on the subject. Google even has one, but it’s fairly in-depth and full of jargon — other guides out there break this down to make it easier to digest.
There is also one more thing you should know — if your company already has a social media presence, those accounts can (and absolutely will) contribute to your company’s SEO.
Also, to be noted, is that it takes time for the search engines to recognize the strength of your site — don’t expect to see immediate results. A good timeframe is usually six months to a year, but quicker results can happen, especially with consistent blogs. And, in the rare case that you’re not on the first page after that timeframe has expired, fret not, as the parameters are not absolute (but we can definitely take a look and see if there’s anything on the back end that is inhibiting it).
Conclusion
Whether you know it or not, you are already contributing to search engines’ algorithm if your business has any sort of online presence. Whether you are maximizing your reach or not is yet to be determined, but chances are there is room for improvement.
Lucky for you, you have found a full-service marketing company armed with decades of experience, ready and equipped to help you. We have helped plenty of local businesses in the same position you’re in — needing to rank higher on search engines to produce more organic traffic, minimizing ad spend and increasing reach.
It’s vital in today’s digital age to have an online presence — those who don’t are often left behind. Get ahead of the competition and maximize your SEO. The best time to do so was yesterday and the second best time is today.
