SEO Basics
SEO embodies a broad application of strategies, tips, and techniques that focus on optimizing both the internal and external aspects of a web page or a website in order to attract traffic and be able to convert it into high value prospects and customers.
Search engine optimization (SEO) has already undergone different phases and forms, but what remains is the fundamental aim of empowering any business endeavor to be more visible and effective in the online world.
It is important for one who wishes to apply SEO with his online initiatives to be familiar with the basic techniques, strategies, and tools that are being used to jumpstart your SEO campaign.
It is also noteworthy to give emphasis on using only the best practices for a longer term, positive result. The success of SEO is a culmination of positive performances over a long period of implementation because it is an ongoing and iterative process and not a one time single deployment. There should be a continuous hard work and dedication towards SEO practices in order to achieve optimum results.
SEO and PPC
Search engine optimization enables a business to be discovered by interested customers in the search engines. Basically, when a customer searches the web and your business doesn’t show up, you are a non-existent company. That is why it is important for your marketing endeavors to include SEO so that you won’t miss out on the great opportunities out of online visibility for your business.
Seach engine optimization is a cost efficient way of doing marketing online. The emphasis here is the “cost,” as another way of achieving traffic and visibility on the web is using pay per click (PPC). PPC is also called “paid search marketing,” which allows businesses to pay for traffic. But this method is expensive, especially if it is going to be deployed for long term. With PPC, you deal with high value keywords to use that will increase the costs even more. That is why more businesses are seeing an investment out of deploying SEO more than PPC. SEO is an ongoing process, and the ROI may not be easily achieved, but the benefits for the long term usage is highly achievable compared with PPC.
Search engine optimization is not an overnight success, and so is PPC. PPC can be faster and more efficient with attracting traffic, but the conversions out of it is still subjective to a number of factors, which includes SEO too. That is why the almost ideal scenario is to combine SEO and PPC for much better results. You get speed and efficiency from PPC, and you get accuracy and relevance from SEO. This is a powerful and foundational combination of strategies, especially when you are dealing with a longer term success in marketing.
SEO Categories
Search engine optimization is comprised of different tips, tactics, strategies, and methodologies that surrounds and flow within the different elements of your web page or website. For the benefit of segregating the concepts behind a variety of SEO tips, SEO is categorized into two:
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On Page SEO
On page SEO encompasses all elements that are within the website that you have control of. This includes the technicalities of programming, attributes, tags, descriptions, language, and markup. It can also apply to how you optimize the navigation flow of your menus, your anchor texts, your image attributes, keyword optimization, keywords in content, page structures, robot.txt, etc.
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Off Page SEO
Off page SEO pertains to inward links made by other websites to your own. The initial impression over off page SEO is to acquire the huge volume of links, but the truth of the matter is that there are links that can actually hurt your online portfolio and your rankings, especially if these are from spam or irrelevant sites. Google is actually penalizing spamming or black hat SEO practitioners, and you don’t want to be identified with these kinds of acts.
Off page SEO’s aim is to generate high quality links by maintaining its threshold in the aspect of relevance and authority. The level of authority on your part is achieved from earning links because of your high valuable content that other websites would want to link to.
SEO Techniques and Strategies
Experian interviewed Rand Fishkin; the CEO and the co-founder of one of the most successful SEO software, SEOmoz, summarized the most important and the “timeless classics” in terms of SEO strategies. These are the following:
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Keyword Research
Keyword is the common language between the customers and the business in the realm of online marketing.
By doing keyword research, a business determines which ones are worthwhile to target, which ones can yield the highest conversions, how one is faring with the other in terms of searchability, its impact to the search engine rankings, the search volume it generates, and a host of other factors about keywords and its relevance to the success of an SEO campaign.
Keywords are critical because search engines have their own way of ranking and recognizing the value of keywords in relation to your website’s rank in the search engine result pages (SERPs).
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On Page Optimization
Search engine optimization can go beyond web traffic and visibility, and this is possible through landing page or on-page optimization.
When a user clicks on a link in the search results, he or she leads to the landing page. Therefore, in order to maximize the time that a visitor stays on your website, SEO is applied to further the visito’sr experience through informative and engaging content, visually appealing site, easily navigable buttons and menu, fast loading times, device optimization options, etc. For search engines to recognize the site’s value as well, proper use and distribution of keywords, image and link attributes, and meta tags and descriptions must also be optimized.
When a visitor is satisfied with what he or she sees and experience with your website, there will be an increased likelihood that he or she will be engaged in high value activities like sales, newsletter sign up, or reviews and comments (positive).
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Improved Website Accessibility
This pertains to the website’s information structure; the way its pages can be “crawled” and how fast and easy it is to be accessed in the variety of devices like desktop and mobile devices.
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Link Building
Link building is a method of establishing a network of “good influencers” for your website reputation. This is done by “linking” your content to other sites through mentions and citations that are relevant to your own content. This way, you carry with you the traffic that they attract and at the same time, expose your content to other types of audiences for better visibility.
Search engines also recognize a relevant association with strong link building networks, which can gather up more “points” for higher search rankings.
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Social Media Marketing Strategies
The trend nowadays is leaning towards social networking and community building. The impact of social media marketing actually strengthens your SEO campaigns through brand awareness. These media influencers can attract huge followings (and traffic too). By incorporating the social media on your SEO marketing, you can maximize the growing influence of social communities to your SEO efforts.
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Vertical Search
Search engine optimization is not all about keywords, but is is also about the optimization of other searchable elements like multimedia (images, videos). SEO is also useful with other types of search opportunities like shopping and local search. Exploring the other kinds of search can widen your opportunities for SEO and the host of benefits and advantages it brings to businesses.
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Content Marketing
Search engine optimization strategies are not all technical. But one can still achieve a way to go up the rankings the natural way, and it is through high quality, relevant, targeting, engaging, and motivational contents. There are so many adjectives to describe a content in order to be worth the share or be linked in, but what is important is it is informative and relevant to the industry that your business is operating.
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Analytics
Analytics is a powerful method of looking at information in another perspective by incorporating key performance indicators and measuring them regularly. In this way, you can monitor the performances of your deployed strategies and apply improvements and changes, if necessary. One can also discover opportunities and trend predictions out of its reporting capabilities, which are valuable in performing crucial decision making.
SEO Trend for 2016
In April 2015, Google released another important update regarding mobile content optimization. This aimed to expand the use of the aspect of mobile friendliness as an important ranking factor and will therefore have a great impact on how search results are ranked. Also, this update includes App indexing, which allows Google to gather content from indexed apps and include it in the search results as well.
Therefore, we see a more mobile optimization oriented SEO strategies to take place, which consequently provide internet users a more optimized content to receive and view in their mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Another prominent SEO influencer will definitely be the social media. 76% of marketers are now using the social media since 2014 to boost and complement their SEO implementations according to Regalix’s State of B2B Marketing for 2015.
Videos are also manifesting itself in Google search results and will continue to do so as more internet users are not only eyeing content but also the ones that incorporate engaging and interactive content.
SEO Software and Tools
Some businesses find SEO techniques harder to implement, especially when one cannot render the right focus and attention that it needs. The top SEO tools are also the ones that are always updating itself with the latest trends, in order to stay ahead of the game. SEO software can give better management of your deployed campaigns. It also lets the user measure its effectiveness and performance through the powerful methods of analytics. Getting the services of an SEO provider might be the best solution so as not to miss the benefits of search engine optimized websites.
Check out CrowdReviews.com’s reviews of SEO tools for client feedbacks about the different SEO tools and SEO software providers available in the market today.
John Tovar
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