In my previous blog, I explained how you can get your business listed online and how doing so would increase your ranking on search engines. Today, I’m going to give you the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) so can help your business get even better results on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing!
What is Search Engine Optimization? Also known as SEO
SEO (or search engine optimization) is the process of performing specific actions to increase your ranking (where your business appears on the list) on search engines like Google. You want to rank as high as possible on search engines to have the best chance at reaching your potential clients, because let’s be honest, no one goes to page two on a Google search.
Site Authority
Search engines use a complex set of algorithms (which change quite often) to determine how relevant your website is to the search terms users are employing. The specific formulas of these algorithms are kept secret but we do know a few key factors:
- Number of external linking domains
- Keyword usage in the content of your website
- Bounce Rate
Number of External Linking Domains
Through the use of an SEO Audit, you can see how many domains are linking back to your website. As a general rule of thumb, you want as many domains as possible linking to your website. More specifically, these other websites should be reputable. Having just one reputable link is vastly more valuable than having 10 unreputable links.
How Do I Get More Links?
If you have other businesses that you work with, you can ask them to add you to a section of their website where they recognize partners (it helps if you offer to do the same for them). You should also get your website listed on as many local listing services as possible. To save money, you can do this by updating them individually, by hand or you can save time by using a service that updates all the listings simultaneously. Here at Suite 4, we have a system that not only updates your local listings but also claims the profiles. This is important as it prevents other people from making changes that may be incorrect.
Keyword Usage in Website Content
Your website is full of text that search engines read to understand what it is you’re offering. Using relevant keywords makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and match you with the search terms of your potential customers. This does not mean that you want to overly populate your website with the same keywords. The rule of thumb here is each keyword you want to rank for should only be matched to one page on your website and you only want to use the keyword 3-6 times on that page. (More than this and the search engines will get suspicious and it will sound unnatural to humans reading it) You also should spread out the keywords across your page title, H1 tags, meta description, and body text.
Bounce Rate/ Session Time
Your bounce rate is how many people land on your web page and then leave before visiting any other pages. Search engines care about this because they figure if someone lands on your page and then left before looking at any other pages, they probably didn’t find what they were looking for. Therefore, your page was irrelevant. This goes hand-in-hand with session time which is how long a user stays on your site.
You can improve your bounce rate and session time by making sure the most relevant information is at the top of your landing page. You should also provide a clear call-to-action at the bottom of the page which takes the user to the next logical step in the buyer’s journey. This could be downloading an ebook, getting a quote, or simply a link to an informational blog.
I know this is a lot of information, but if you take the time to do this you will see your search rankings improve and the number of leads you receive increase.
If you ever want help with your search engine optimization, feel free to give me a call. I’ll be happy to run an SEO audit to see how your website is performing and give you some recommendations on what to improve.