Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process where you aim to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your website through organic search outcomes. When a search engine like Google ranks your website on the first page, you will receive more visibility. This means that you get more visitors, increasing your revenue. If the Seo ranking is high, customers consider your brand as trustworthy. SEO also improves the user’s experience making it easy for clients to interact with your site. Read on to discover why SEO is essential to your business. Visibility and rankings. Users tend to choose the topmost items that search engines display when searching for a product or service online. If you rank high in search engines, the visibility to the potential customers becomes high. If your business receives more visits or views on search engines, the number of customers likely to purchase from your brand becomes high. As such, it is essential to incorporate SEO into your marketing strategy to increase your visibility. Web Traffic. In simple terms, this means that if potential clients cannot find your website, the chances of missing opportunities become high. To increase your organic search engine traffic, consider optimizing your site for SEO. This will, in turn, increase the number of visitors to your site. SEO also allows you to target specific audiences, improving your chances of increased sales. Audience targeting makes your clients feel unique and more willing to buy from you. Trustworthy. If your SEO score is good, you will appear in several search engines. SEO optimization will earn you a positive appeal and increase your visibility. Combined with excellent user experience, these characteristics will earn your trust with potential customers. Customers are more likely to refer a company they trust to their friends and family. Every start-up brand requires referrals to grow. As such, it is essential to create trust with potential clients. Growth. SEO is essential to the development of any business, whether small or already established. As earlier mentioned, if your brand ranks higher on the search engines, the more traffic the brand receives. An SEO-optimized website will attract more traffic, generating more leads. If you satisfy the needs of these customers by providing quality products, you will experience gradual growth. Read more: The importance of SEO in business |
The time for the website promotion might range from several days to months. With manual SEO, the implementation of on-page and off-page optimization tasks could be really tedious. Thus, automated SEO is widely used by many webmasters these days. Owing to SEO automation tools and software, it takes less time and effort for search engine optimization activities. It is sometimes considered that automated SEO could not benefit your website promotion. On the contrary, automatic SEO was believed to be hazardous and even harmful. However, this statement is far from reality because the effect of automated SEO is the opposite. It helps SEO teams to streamline repetitive tasks, which allows dedicating more time to other important SEO activities. What is automatic SEO? The principles of automatic SEO imply the utilization of software to perform daily tasks faster. As a result, effective SEO teams become more productive when using SEO automation tools. Automated SEO considerably reduces the amount of time and resources spent on various SEO activities. Automated processes provide a possibility for webmasters to spend less time on routine daily tasks. While an SEO expert may spend minutes on finding broken links, for instance, an SEO automation tool can accomplish that in seconds. How does automated SEO work? The concept of automated SEO refers to the desktop software and utilities designed to streamline activities dedicated to search engine optimization. Automation tools assist webmasters in repetitive tasks that could be easily systematized. Those are usually related to position tracking, backlink profile analysis, finding broken links, site audit, and reporting. To get the most benefits out of automation, webmasters first need to decide which processes to streamline. Based on that, dedicated SEO automation tools should be selected for facilitating chosen activities. Read more: Importance of automation for your website & SEO team |
We can all agree that the best websites are designed for both users and search engines, right?
That means you never should sacrifice beauty over function, or vice versa.
Check your website for the following six common mistakes to see if your beautiful design is preventing your pages from ranking high in search engines.
Mistake 1: Missing H1 Tags (Especially on the Home Page)
Imagine entering a website with a nice background picture, a well thought out font, and an elaborate color scheme. It looks amazing. Browsing through feels like a walk in a beautiful garden.
Too bad nobody will find it in search engines.
Why? Because very often website designers and developers forget about essential SEO elements.
The most common offense is removing an H1 tag just because there is no place for it on the page.
The H1 tag is one of the first elements search engine crawlers will look at to determine what the page is about. Having this tag, and including your target keyword, improves your chances of ranking higher.
Here’s a website that has a clear H1 tag front and center:
Read more: How to Avoid 6 Common Web Design Mistakes That Hurt SEO
Since the inception of the search engine, SEO has been an important, yet often misunderstood industry. For some, these three little letters bring massive pain and frustration. For others, SEO has saved their business. One thing is for sure: having a clear and strategic search strategy is what often separates those who succeed from those who don’t.
As we wrap up 2016, let’s take a look at how the industry has grown and shifted over the past year, and then look ahead to 2017.
A growing industry
It was only a few years ago when the internet was pummeled with thousands of “SEO is Dead” posts. Well, here we are, and the industry is still as alive as ever. SEO’s reputation has grown over the past few years, due in great part to the awesome work of the real pros out there. Today, the industry is worth more than $65 billion. Companies large and small are seeing how a good search strategy has the power to change their business.
As search engines and users continue to evolve, SEO is no longer just an added service brought to you by freelance web designers. With the amount of data, knowledge, tools and experience out there, SEO has become a power industry all on its own.
Over the course of the year, my agency alone has earned a number of new contracts from other agencies that are no longer able to provide their own search efforts. A large divide between those that can deliver SEO and those that can’t is beginning to open up across the board.
The rise of AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now prevalent in many of our lives. Google, IBM, Amazon and Apple are very active in developing and using Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI). ANI can be used to automate repetitive tasks, like looking up product details, shipping dates and order histories and performing countless other customer requests.
The consumer is becoming more and more comfortable with this technology and has even grown to trust its results. Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, announced during his Google I/O keynote that 20 percent of queries on its mobile app and on Android devices are voice searches.
RankBrain, Google’s machine-learning artificial intelligence system, is now among the top three ranking signals for Google’s search algorithm. Why? Google handles more than 3.5 billion searches per a day, and 16 to 20 percent of those are unique queries that have never been searched before. To handle this, the team at Google has harnessed the power of machine learning to help deliver better results.
While we can’t “control” RankBrain, what we can do is learn more about how Google is using it and then help the tool by creating good content that earns shares and links, building connections with others in our niche or related niches, and building trust in very targeted topics.
We are still in the beginning stages of this technology, but as more and more homes become equipped with smart tools like Amazon Echo and Google Home, we can be sure that these tech giants will use the knowledge they gain from voice search to power their AI technology.
Read more: What we’ve learned about SEO in 2016
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of search engine optimization when it comes to online marketing. Google is many things, but it’s the company’s advertising business that pays for all of those moonshots. The fact remains that Google is the world’s largest advertising company, and if you’re looking to score high on its search engine results page (SERP), it’s worth listening to what Dan Clarke, founder and CEO of search agency Disruptient, has to say, noting that these 5 main principles are the guiding light behind all of TWP’s strategies.
- Content is King
- Quick Access
- Unique url per content segment
- External links are valuable
- Do not try to fool Google
Dan was in Jakarta for the recently concluded Tech In Asia Jakarta 2015 conference, and shared advice, stories, and insights into how best to tackle SEO. Speaking to a packed room at the Marketing Stage, Dan summarized his entire advice with one golden rule: build websites for people, not for search engines.
“If you keep this rule at the forefront of your process, it automatically fulfills most of Google’s requirements for delivering quality results on their platform.” explains Dan. “Ranking first is not the sole factor, it’s about looking good as well. Google is now an ‘answers engine’ rather than a search engine.”
Read more: 5 crucial steps to win at SEO
SEO is no magic bullet. You need to understand its key elements before entering into an SEO campaign.
The marketing industry is all about ideas and strategies. The options to promote brands are so diverse it can often overwhelm entrepreneurs. Moreover, each of these marketing platforms has its own advantages when it comes to helping your company to grow. That said, most startups can’t invest time and energy into all these marketing efforts due to budget constraints.
Businesses, large and small, should always plan and budget their marketing activities in advance to keep things under control. Yet, as a local search specialist, one area I continually see out-of-control expenses is SEO. One reason is that many find planning a marketing budget an elusive task. But this doesn’t need to be the case. All you need is a simple plan and budget that is easy to stick to.
Read more: 4 Key Things Entrepreneurs Should Know Before Planning a SEO Budget
SEO is often like website development. In Development, as years pass, you keep adding pages, features, and content. It all works, but you find that it starts to get a bit bloated and disorganized. Every few years, it’s a good idea to take all the improvements you’ve tacked on and rebuild them into the core of a new site.
In SEO optimization, the same thing happens. We find pages to optimize for certain keywords, add other optimized content, and so on. Over time, we find we made the best keyword/page decisions at the time, but those decisions may no longer make sense today. New content was created that is a much better topical fit for certain keywords and pages that were optimized for relevant keywords are no longer relevant pages.
SEO creep happens. But, there are things you can do to minimize it so that the dreaded site rebuild doesn’t have to happen more than once every few years . . . which is just about time when a site re-design is due anyway.
Read more: SEO Optimization: How to Avoid Nasty SEO Creep After 10 Years of Optimization
The Essentials of SEO for Small Business.
SEO or search engine optimization, often a misunderstood topic for small business owners. With 93 percent of online experiences beginning with a search engine, it is vital for small business owners to understand the fundamentals of SEO and how it can increase traffic to your website.
Why website optimization is out and website marketability is in.
Read how Crain’s Detroit Business lays out Website Marketability, explains SEO, and defines the value of a website as being related to it’s structure, content, and evolution.
Of all articles in our blog, this is the most important to us as it explains how internet marketing works in 2015, noting that this precisely matches TotalWeb Partner’s value proposition.
“Building a site is not an end game, it is just the first step… and all of TWP’s standard offers include ongoing support, updating, and marketing to meet the requirements of marketing on-line in 2015.”
Defining Website Marketability
From Crain’s Detroit Business April 17, 2015
3 Keys To Understanding Your SEO Needs.
If you’re a provider of search engine optimization (SEO) services, you’ve undoubtedly heard the following:
“I know I need SEO, but I don’t know exactly what I need.”
If you aren’t an SEO vendor, you may have found yourself saying just that at one time or another.
Businesses have slowly but surely begun to realize the value of search engine optimization, and consequently, the demand for SEO services has increased. However, it’s important to understand what you hope to gain from an SEO program before you embark on one.