Search engines are essential to drive more traffic to your website. So it’s critical for you to better understand search engines so you can make the necessary changes to optimize your site’s pages to increase its search rankings. This BLOG article with help you gain a further understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

A search engine’s main function is to provide users with the most relevant search results possible. The key is to understand how they determine site relevance. Years ago, SEO was primarily focused on keywords. In fact, the more key words the better. Developers would stuff as many keywords into a site’s HOME page, which altered search results in those days. Today those same practices may get your website blacklisted by search engines. The second major development of SEO practices focused on incoming page links. But then again, developers figured out how to take advantage of this system by flooding the web with millions of low-value, and sometime paid site links.

Today, the search engines’ algorithms, which is what they use to determine a site’s relevance to a keyword search, are much more sophisticated. It’s not the volume of key words that’s important, but how strategically they are placed within a page. It’s not the quantity of incoming links with the right keyword, but how relevant they are and where they come from. The search engines have become much better at determining what things mean as opposed to just trying to match a word and count links. This has enabled them to take a “quality not quantity” approach to delivering search results to users.

For example, if your business is pet supplies, you would want to place those key words not only in the title tag of your site but in your main heading as well. These are considered two high priority locations that search engines like Google use when scanning and then categorizing your website. You would also want incoming links from places like popular business directories, review sites, and social media. Blog articles would also prove helpful in gaining higher rankings.

Here are some other key elements that search engines are looking for in a website:

• Content: How rich is your site’s content and is it consistent with your site’s page titles and descriptions?
• Titles, Meta Description, Headers and URL: There are four essential places you should place your keywords to get better search engine rankings: title, headers, URL and meta description.
• Navigation: Does your website have an easy-to-follow and category-structured page navigation?
• Interpretation: Google has ability to “read” your website and interpret its content based on overall theme, category, and topics. This information is used to categorize your site in their search engine. Make sure your information is presented in a manner that is clear, to the point, and easy to read.
• Performance: Does everything work correctly?
• Speed: Websites that load faster – on desktop and mobile devices – have an advantage over those that are slower.
• Site Map: Does your website have a sitemap and can it be crawled by search engines?
• Social Media Linkage: Does your website have LIVE social media icons with links to your social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.?
• User Experience: Everything above is rolled into this. Google themselves have said their goal is to deliver the best overall user experience, not only in their sites, but in the results returned in their search engine. Does your site have a clear focus? Is it easy to navigate? Is it responsive? Is it safe?

SEO is about strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase a website’s ranking in search engines, which in turn increases the number of visitors to that website. These search engines include Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. The ultimate business goal of good SEO is to increase your overall brand awareness, customer base, and of course profits — all by improving your website’s ranking.

It’s About Organic Searches
SEO is centered around “organic” search results. These are the results that appear in the main part of the page when a user types a group of terms in the box and clicks “Search”. This does not include the paid results that show up at the top and right side of the search page, such as Google Ads. To rank well for search terms relevant to your business, knowledge of how search engines work is essential. You also need to know which words or phrases people use to search for your products or services. Researching these search terms or keywords determine which ones will become part of your site’s content and coding.

The Importance of Quality Content
Another key aspect of SEO is having high-quality, keyword-rich content on every page of your website. Because many websites today are doing all of the right things for good SEO, what will separate one company from another in the same industry is quality content.

Content Marketing Defined
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a “strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

They add that the “essence of content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.” Some examples of content marketing including having a Blog Series, offering E-Books, Micro-sites, Educational Video Series, Special Apps, Podcasts, Free Guides, Email Campaigns, eNewsletters, Articles, Webcasts and more.

Hiring a SEO Company
Based on our experience, the ideal time to hire a SEO company is when you’re about to launch a brand new site for a new business, or you are planning a website redesign for an existing one. This way, you can be assured that your site is search engine friendly and fully coordinated from the bottom up. However, if you want the best return for your marketing dollar, there really is no bad time to a talented SEO professional.