Search Engine Optimization can seem like an intimidating concept to many business owners. Luckily, having been in the industry for a while, we, at Oacer Web Services, have been able to put together simple tips and tricks that help business owners excel at SEO.  We will discuss six simple steps in this blog that will give you a jump on your competition with SEO this year.

What is SEO? 

SEO stands for search engine optimization. When you optimize your site for search engines, you give search engines instructions on how to crawl and index your content so that it will rank highly in their results pages. That way, when someone searches for a specific term or phrase related to your business, you show up in one of the top few spots with a link to your company’s website and an excerpt of text from that page that is relevant to their search query.

How can SEO help your business grow? 

Building organic traffic through Search Engine Optimization can do wonders for your business. According to a study conducted by Internet World Stats, 72% of consumers search online to find information about local businesses and services before visiting them. It is a vital part of every business’ marketing plan and has been for many years now. Search engine optimization helps you stand out from your competition and attract more customers to your website. 

6 Steps to grow organically using SEO

While there are certainly many strategies you can implement in order to ensure you’re getting as much traffic as possible, below are six steps every business owner should take in order to really make a splash with their site.

• Make your website highly ‘Crawlable’

Many people know that your website should be optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but they don’t actually know what optimized means. Basically, to get a high ranking on Google and other search engines, you need to make sure that your website is highly crawlable, or in simple words – easy to be found by search engines. You can do so by creating an XML sitemap and making sure each page has a unique title tag and meta description.

• Understand your Target Audience

Before you can think about how to optimize your site, you need to understand who it is that you’re trying to reach. You need to know what interests your audience and pay close attention to search trends. What are people searching for? What do they want? Where do they go when they’re looking for something specific? Once you have an idea of what people are interested in (and which companies already provide those solutions), then you can start brainstorming how YOU can fit into that niche and create a strategy that will help your website stand out from all of the other options available.

• Focus on the User

As search engine algorithms improve, so too does Google’s ability to determine exactly what users are looking for. It’s all about meeting searchers where they are—not being seen as spamming their results with unrelated content. Now, SEO isn’t simply about keywords and page optimization, but about understanding your target audience and their behaviours. The more you can focus on serving searchers—rather than ranking well in search engines—the better off you will be.

• Build High Quality & Quantity of Backlinks

A backlink is a reference, connection or citation from another website to your own. When you build high quality and quantity of backlinks to your site, search engines consider it as votes for their rankings. The more votes you have, the better your ranking in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). More traffic means more profit! All that seems simple enough but we must take care of some things: make sure you’re not building spammy links; try to integrate them with natural content on your pages and make sure they’re relevant and valuable.

• Use Keyword-Rich Content

Using keyword-rich content in your writing will help your page rank higher when people search for relevant information online. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest to find relevant keywords, and use them when you write your next post! Make sure to include at least one of these per post. While many popular websites use overly general keywords (ex: iPhone), it’s more effective to aim for specific terms (ex: iPhone 7 release date). When choosing between multiple options, be sure to choose something that is more searchable but also contains phrases that represent your website. Be sure not to go overboard with long-tail keywords; three or four keyword phrases are ideal in most cases.

• Keep Your Content Fresh and Unique

When people think of SEO, they tend to think of keywords and link building. And while both of those things are important, there’s also one more important factor: content. You can optimize your website for every possible keyword on Earth, but if you don’t have any fresh and un-plagiarized content on your site, your traffic will never grow. Consider adding new pages about popular topics (or updating older ones) at least once a month, if not more often. It will be time well spent in helping with your search engine rankings!

In Conclusion,

If you haven’t mastered search engine optimization, now is a great time to get on board. Luckily, there are a few strategies that can help you out. Try some of these six ideas to improve your search engine rankings and get more traffic from Google and Bing. And if you still are having a hard time making them work for you, you can always rely on an expert – talk to us and we’ll get it done for you!