Learn the Basics of Search Engine Optimization

How does a search engine know to show you a page? We’ve all used Google before, but maybe we didn’t think about the work that goes into getting a website to register on search engines. It can be difficult to wrap our heads around, and the science behind it is always fluctuating and changing. From your computer to your phone to your tablet, there are many ways for search engines to feed us results that are catered to us specifically. Basically, Search Engine Optimization convinces those search engines that we are the prominent pick for their users.

If our website shows up more often on search engines, we will get more visitors. More visitors will mean more clicks and sales, and that means higher profits for our company. The purpose of this insight is to guide you through the different disciplines of SEO and how any level of marketer can take these simple tips and utilize them on their own website. You could be a company, brand, or content creator looking to increase the traffic to your sight; whatever walk of life you come from you can utilize these basic tricks to maximize your search engine optimization.

SEO has two categories to define itself: On-page SEO and Off-page SEO. On-page is what you can tangibly read or click on a webpage, and off page is back-end design that handles links, page loading times, etc. It’s important to note that increasing both will help your search engine optimization greatly.

Common On-page SEO:

• Keywords
• Metadata
• Header 1,2,3
• Image alt-text
• File name data
• Hyperlinks

Common Off-page SEO

• Responsive Design
• Load time optimization
• File compression
• Redirection

SEO is important because the higher your placement in a search engine, the more likely a customer is going to click on your website. Organic traffic is far more valuable than sponsored traffic. Most users of Google and Bing purposefully avoid sponsored spots and roll their eyes at the idea of a company buying the spot. The long-term value of investing in SEO is increasing the odds a customer will buy something from your site or walk in through your doors.

Influencing your ranking in search engines starts with keywords. Basically, if a word relevant to your industry or business is used on your site, search engines will show you to that audience when they search. There is a caveat to this: overusing the word can hurt your ranking. Back in the 2000’s people found they could just type the word they wanted to rank for into their webpage as many times as possible and, of course, they ranked high for that specific term. Google put an end to this. You can see the entire history of Google on one of our previous insights, check it out here.

When looking for important keywords, we have many tools at our disposal. Finding exact keywords can be a challenge, so it’s also important to think about a large list of relevant keywords that are tangentially related to your industry or brand. When creating a paid ad campaign on Google or Meta we are allowed to pick a long list of keywords and phrases to gear the ads towards.

Here are some keyword tools you can use to amass a large list of keywords:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• SEOptimer

Keywords have a couple of facets to them to keep an eye on, like “cost per click” (CPC). Keywords you pick for your search engine optimization will have an associated cost. Advertisers will calculate how much money you will most likely have to spend to get a prospective customer to click on your ad specifically. There is also the search volume calculator, this will tell you how many searches are performed for that keyword or phrase usually per month.

Now, when using search engine optimization on your website you can take those lists of keywords you just built in those tools and start to integrate them into your website via blogs and text. This leads us to our next topic: On-page SEO.

The first bubble on our checklist will be metatags and meta descriptions. These are the title and body of text for your website that appear in a search engine. This is your hook; this will convince someone to click on your link and visit your website. Try to fit keywords into the title and body here so they appear more in searches related to your audience’s needs. These need to be concise and straight to the point as we don’t have many characters to work with.

Nothing will help your SEO more than providing good content. This insight you are reading right now is specifically designed to show up in Google and Bing in searches for “SEO” or “search engine optimization”. This page will help people learn more about SEO, gain information, and hopefully trust us for their SEO needs for their business. You do not need to be Ernest Hemmingway, but you do need complete and full thoughts with the additions of images, hyperlinks, and provide access to free tools and utilities that your prospective clients can use, or at least know that YOU can use them.

The last things for our on-page SEO tips are URLs and image alt-text. Making sure your URLs are short and understandable is good for search engine optimization, but it can also help the people using the search engine to find the right pages they need. Image alt-text is often forgotten, but it is the text behind an image on a website that is meant to describe the image. It was originally developed to help visually impaired people register what is on a website, but it also plays a huge role in SEO. Search engines pick up on keywords in the descriptions of image. Do not overdo these, Google and Bing can recognize when keywords are being crammed into every image and will punish you for it.

Off-page search engine optimization is tricky, but manageable. First, we are going to talk about backlinks. To find out a full rundown you can visit this insight where we talk about every detail of a backlink. When another website has a link on their page that directs people to your site, that is a backlink. Sounds simple, but it is difficult to get other companies to agree to host a link to your site. Create profiles on aggregate site like Clutch.com and build out your profile and link your work in that profile. This will give you multiple backlinks. Also, posting links to your blog pages, announcement pages, sales or deals from your site on social media accounts will also count as a backlink.

Speaking of social media, nothing can promote your business like a strong social media presence. You do not have to be an influencer, but you do need to post occasionally and interact socially on a social media site. Make sure to repurpose your content onto social media whenever you can. Did you take a cool picture of your office? Put it on everything. Here is our insight on how to use social media properly for search engine optimization and marketing in general.

Lastly, business accounts are going to be the last off-page SEO topic. Google my Business and Bing Place for Business are the two you want to stay on top of. Yelp, Yahoo, and the others don’t have much of an impact. Make sure you have updated photos, hours, contact information, and links on your business listing. Make sure you have claimed it as your business and linked your work email to it.

This is the type of search engine optimization that is not seen by the viewers on your website. If you do these correctly your audience will have no idea why they enjoy your website so much, it’s subliminal. Many of these will require intimate knowledge of web design, or the help of a web designer.

The first and most important thing any website can improve is their loading speed. We have all visited a website that loaded in 0.3 seconds, and we thought, “Wow, that was incredibly fast.” Then we reload the page just to test it out again, as if it was some magical moment that only happened once. Compressing your images helps as large image files require a lot more data. Instead of embedding a video directly, have it linked to a YouTube video page to save on data from your webpage. Make sure the text on your pages is evenly distributed and that your homepage is not 50,000 words long as it will take too long to load them all.

If you’re searching for tips on SEO you have probably heard of “responsive design” which is how a website looks on multiple types of devices. You phone, tablet, and computer all have different dimensions on their screen, and you want your content to show up as seamlessly as possible on each one. Mobile usability is so important, that if your site is not optimized for mobile phones Google will just not show your website to anyone on a phone. It’s that important.

Search engines also have preferences for secure websites. The internet used to use a thing called “HTTP” which stands for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol” which would always go before a web address. “http://www.” Remember? Well, now the internet widely uses “HTTPS” which just adds “Secure” at the end. This is a type of end-to-end encryption that ensures the data from a user’s computer won’t be scraped by people with bad intentions.

In addition, search engines prefer websites that have something called an “SSL Certificate” which means your website is certified as safe to be communicated with over the internet. It sounds odd, but these security measures did not always exist and have become common practice for companies.

Keyword stuffing is the main culprit here. Do NOT repeatedly type out your keywords all over your website on every page. Even if you have a white background and use white text where you can’t even read it as a human, but you think it will boost your google results, don’t try it. The magic range is 5-10% of your text should be mentioning keywords. Imagine clicking on this page and the bottom half was “SEO SEO SEO SEO SEO SEO SEO “(We hesitate to even write this out now because it may count negatively in this page’s own SEO.

Focus instead on usability for the audience. Make sure that if you mention a service that you hyperlink to your services page. Create compelling content that helps people with information or entertains them with something hilarious. Have tools and resources available with a hyperlink or downloadable package. There are many avenues to ensure your website is valuable, it just takes time and effort to provide it to your customers.

Ignoring responsive design is the next biggest killers of SEO. Make sure your website displays properly on a cellular telephone. Google will not even show a mobile user your site if it isn’t optimized. Call your web developer and ask them to compress the image on the site and make sure the responsive design is fast and intuitive. A phone and a computer load and display data on a screen differently.

Last thing, keep your website up to date and fresh. We update our website every year and half, we do a rebranding every 5 years, and we upload blogs and services pages weekly and monthly. The website updates will be more expensive, but blogs will take up far more time. A good blog will take a couple hours to build an outline, type out the thoughts, pick out pictures, and then go into WordPress afterwards and add hyperlinks and external links alongside image alt-texts.

SEOver and Out

We have a full arsenal of tools to utilize now. Hopefully we have covered enough topics to make you feel more at ease in the world of search engine optimization. Quickly, here is a recap of the topics and their main focuses:

1. Keywords
   1. Build a list of related words and phrases
   2. Use tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush
   3. Keep a list handy while creating content
2. On-Page SEO
   1. Metatags and meta descriptions
   2. Content Creation and Blogs
   3. Simplify URLs
   4. Make sure images have alt-text
3. Off-page SEO
   1. Backlinks
   2. Social Media
   3. Business Account Listings
4. Technical SEO
   1. Responsive Design
   2. Image Compression
   3. Link videos, do not embed them
   4. Optimize page for loading speed
5. Common mistakes
   1. Do NOT keyword stuff
   2. Provide value with information or entertainment
   3. Do NOT skip responsive design (It’s seriously important)
   4. Update your site regularly

If you have any questions on SEO you can always reach out to us here at Acclaim, we will be happy to walk you through how we approach SEO and to answer any questions you may have about tips or best practices.