Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is one of the most important marketing tools out there. It is 2016, businesses are using SEO to their advantage every day, chances are your competition has a plan in place. If you don’t have a plan to take advantage of search engine optimization you are falling behind and losing out on sales.
So, what is SEO? It is all about directing traffic to your website. When a person types a words into search engines like Google and Bing, they have search robots scouring the internet looking for that combination of words. If you google, website design in Calgary, Google will display pages upon pages of websites that match that description. The secret to search engine optimization is the better your on-page SEO, the higher up in the results you show up. Search engines drive three times more website traffic than social media does, that number gets significantly higher if you show up on the first page of search engines.
Many many moons ago, it might have been fine to just have that combination of words repeated throughout your website, but it certainly won’t work anymore. We thought we would be nice and give you a small list of ways that you can improve your website’s SEO standing – though, be warned, we are keeping some of our trade web design secrets to ourselves.
Google +
Ever wondered why there are a ton of companies that have a google plus page, when no one you know actually uses google plus? Because Google owns google+ so it naturally ranks these pages higher than others.
Mobile
Make sure that your website is fully optimized for mobile web traffic. There are a million and one upsides here. If your website is not mobile, give your head a shake and then look around you. Three out of the four people around you are probably on their smartphones. If your website doesn’t run smoothly on a phone or ipad, people are not going to stay on your site. It is this reason that search engine search bots don’t have a high opinion of websites not optimized for mobile and your website will show up low on the search results totem pole.
Linking
Getting other influential websites to link to your website is great SEO, even easier than that is internal linking. Remember that combination of search words we were talking about up near the top of this article, website design in Calgary? You can’t throw that combination around your website expecting it to work…however…. You can use that combination thoughtfully in a blog (for instance) link it back to your homepage and voila! Links!
Images
Who doesn’t like a good picture?! Pretty much everyone enjoys it when a website uses images to break up large chunks of text, your audience will respond well to strategically placed images. Search engine bots will also respond very well to titles that images have. If you embed your keywords into your image titles there is yet another place for search bots to find you and rank you higher.
Of course there is “black hat” search engine optimization, or underhanded sketchy SEO techniques exist, but don’t bother. First, it’s hella shady. Secondly, search bots are starting to be programmed to recognize nefarious strategies and avoid them. If you want to see your business grow through organic search engine results, give us a call, we can help!
