What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is the process of optimizing your website to maximize the amount of visitors by ensuring that the site appears/ranks high on the search engine results. SEO adds major value to your business because it increases sales & revenue. By getting in front of the right audience when they are searching for your type of business, increases exposure. It is important to note that SEO success is not guaranteed. However, optimizing your website to fit the search engine's rules and does increase your chances in SEO success. It can take a 4 months, 1 year or even longer to rank for your industry depending on the competition so it is important to optimize your website as soon as possible.
Why Ranking On Google Is Important
Every single person who buys your products/services owns a smartphone. Over 90% of your customers rely on their smartphone for advice on buying a new product/service. Having said that, Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second. That is over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year. If you are not promoting your website to rank on Google, you are missing a huge revenue stream.
Website:
Without a strong foundation your SEO strategy will FAIL. Your website MUST be:
- Mobile Friendly
- Responsive
- Fast (Page Speed)
If you land on a website and it does not fit the screen of the device you are on, you are going to leave the site without converting.
If you land on a website and it takes longer than 2 seconds for a page to load, you are going to leave the site.
Leaving the website without interacting with it, is called a bounce. A high bounce rate tell Google that the majority of the people landing on your website, are not finding what they need. This will result in low rankings.
Google’s Page Speed test (this tool also gives recommendations on how to speed up your website): https://developers.google.com/speed/
- Crawlable/Indexed
Your website needs to be set to “INDEX”. This is basically allowing Google to “crawl” your website (review your website) and rank your website as necessary.
If your website is set to “NOINDEX”, then that is you telling Google you do not want them to “crawl” (review) your site. This is not what you want if you are trying to do SEO.
How do you know if your website is Indexed:
On the Google search bar, type the following: site:[yourURLhere]
If all your website pages appear, then your website has been indexed by Google. If they do not appear, your website has not been indexed.
Keywords:
What are you optimizing for?
- Identify the terms people are searching for
- Do keyword research
Understand who your prospective customers are and what they’re likely to search for.
Ask yourself the following:
- What types of things are they interested in?
- What problems can you solve for them?
- What type of language do they speak?
- Who else are they buying things from (this means your competitors)
Create a list of keywords you think your customers were searching when they found you and a list of 5 competitors.
Use Google Keyword Planner to input all the data and identify the keywords with the most search volume in the area you sell to.
Keyword Planner: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/
WARNING: Use common sense. Just because the keyword has a high search volume this does NOT mean that you should target it. For example: For a baker, “cake” is going to have a large search volume. But that keyword is too broad. Someone who is searching cake, can be looking for a recipe, a picture, or a question about a cake. You want to target someone who is looking for a baker that is searching with the keyword “cake” in it. They might search something like “cake bakery” or “wedding cake Miami”.
On Page Optimization:
- Title Tags
- Meta Descriptions
- Quality Content
- URL Structure
- Do You Need Parent/Child Pages?
- Breadcrumbs
- Headline
- Image ALT Tags
- Xml sitemap
Title Tags:
A title tag is the blue headline that appears for each website when conducting a search.
This is the most impactful place you can put your keyword.
The title tag is the deciding factor for a user between your website and a competitor’s.
Do not make your title tag longer than 60 characters.
Meta Description:
A meta description is the supporting sentences under the title tag.
Your meta description may not always show, but if you have a compelling description of your page that would make folks searching likely to click, you can greatly increase traffic.
Do not make your meta description longer than 170 characters.
Example of a Title Tag & Meta Description:
Content:
Make sure your content answers the questions searchers are asking so that they’re likely to stay on your page and engage with your content.
Know where and how to use keywords in your content for maximum searchability.
The content on your site should be organized in a logical way. This is not only good for SEO, it also helps visitors on your site find other related content easily. (The longer they stay on your site, the better.)
Promote your content: Increase visibility to your content by sharing it on social networks.
Google likes to see constant updates on your website. A good way to share new content is by creating a blog.
NO DUPLICATE CONTENT: Do NOT steal or rewrite content that has already been mentioned in another page on your website or on another website. This will get your entire website penalized by Google.
URL Structure:
Include keywords in your URL.
If your page is about “cookies and cream frosting recipe”, instead of having www.yoururlhere.com/wasergftyjuytre, have your URL include the keyword “www.yoururlhere.com/cookies-and-cream-frosting-recipe”
Parent/Child Pages:
Parent pages are superior to child pages which means they leave their mark on child pages. That means a child page will carry the parent page’s keyword in its URL. Without parent pages, child pages cannot exist.
Breadcrumbs:
Breadcrumbs are links that allow a user to track their path from the page they are currently viewing to the homepage of your website. They appear close to the top of your page and reflect the structure of your site
Breadcrumbs are a very useful tool for enriched user experience, especially when your site has a complex hierarchy that deters users from digging deeper. They also help the search engines to understand the internal structure of your site, casting an overall positive impact on the SEO of your website.
Headline:
Each page on your website should only focus on one service/product. Your website should be structured like an outline. It should have ONE header 1 (h1) (with the keyword) and supporting header 2, header 3 tags.
For example. If you have a page with a chocolate cake recipe and a strawberry shortcake recipe. Split this into two pages. “Chocolate Cake Recipe” will be the H1 and “Ingredients” will be an H2.
Image ALT Tags
An ALT tag is the alternative information for a client if a user can not for any reason view the image. This also gives you another opportunity – outside of your content – to help search engines understand what your page is about. This is another opportunity to help search engines understand what your page is about.
The ALT Tag helps your image rank on image search
XML Sitemap:
This is a URL with a list of ALL the pages you want the search engine to rank. It is important to create one and submit it to Google so that they can crawl your website and rank it as fast as possible.
Recommended Tools:
Google Analytics:
This is a FREE tool we will use to gain customer insights.
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/
Google Search Console:
This is a tool that helps understand what is going on in your website.
Conversion Tracking:
How do you know what is working if you are not tracking your conversions. Invest in call tracking. Track form fills through Analytics. Track Live Chat leads through Analytics. For best results, link your conversions to your CRM.
