According to Search Engine Land, SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of increasing traffic to your website from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial,” or “natural” search results on search engines – versus the paid listings that appear at the top and sides of the search results page.
Major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo show search results based on the keywords and phrases a user types. These search results consists of web pages, videos, images and local listings. The top sites shown in the organic results are the sites the search engine considers most relevant. Having your website at the top of the organic search results is a coveted position. You don’t pay Google to list your website first in search results, your site has to earn the spot.
Common Craft, a media how-to site, describes a search engines as a librarian that essentially has access to every book in the world and must devise an effective and efficient system to collect which book, or web page, the user is looking for. So how does a search engine manage to find information from the worldwide web and redirect the most relevant content to its users in a matter of milliseconds?
Algorithms. If you haven’t heard that word since high school algebra, don’t be scared. Search engines use algorithms to determine primary search results. The key to higher rankings on search engines is optimizing your site to match up with the search engine’s algorithm, also known as Search Engine Optimization.
Keywords
To boost your search result ranking, choose your keywords carefully. Make sure you choose keywords that are relevant to your site content and uniform with other keywords in titles and links, because those matter too! Each page of your website needs a title, so make it consistent with its content keywords that users are most likely to search for. Practice consistency by having similar keywords in your page titles, content and links.
Links
All throughout the internet, webpages link to other webpages (hence the use of the descriptor “web” in the WWW). Websites that have a lot of linking pages look good to search engines. The rankings of the external websites you link to will also have an effect on SEO. Mind your Ps and Qs though, search engines are smart and can tell if fake links are being used just to look good, so attempting to trick the algorithm will only result in diminished rankings.
Reputation Management
Your site’s reputation is also crucial when gaining rank in search engine results. Keep content fresh, engaging and original. In a previous blog, The Importance of Great Customer Service, we discussed addressing comments made on social media and in reviews. This is not only a great customer service policy but is important to your search engine results.
Improved search results are not instantaneous, it takes effort but yields superior results when executed correctly. Find a balanced combination of all the previous algorithm components and higher search ranking will come. Manning Media can help you achieve the results you have been searching for with specialist in all areas of marketing. To contact us in Frederick, Call 301-620-7700 or in Hagerstown, Call 301-733-4500. You can also fill out our online request form by clicking HERE!.
What is SEO and Why Does it Matter?
