The importance of optimizing your website for search engines in this era of digital content consumption is undeniable. “Google” is both a noun and a verb, as the act of searching for content online is a daily practice for most internet users.
Here are a few statistics that paint a picture of just how important search engine optimization, or SEO, actually is:
- 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine.
- 51% of all web traffic comes from organic search.
- 87% of smartphone users use a search engine at least once per day.
Those 3 stats should be enough to convince you that SEO is a vital aspect of your marketing strategy. But, what about your business performance?
How does SEO marketing impact your bottom line?
- Search engine leads have a 7% close rate, while other outbound leads only have a 1.7% close rate.
- 78% of location-based mobile searches result in an offline sale.
Convinced yet?
SEO isn’t quite as simple as it used to be, but it’s not rocket science either. SEO can be boiled down to a few key factors, each with important elements to pay attention to.
#1: Quality Content
Just a few short years ago, SEO was almost completely focused on keywords and keyword density as the primary ranking factors. You picked a keyword and you made sure your website content was littered with that exact term as much as possible. In 2009, that was an effective SEO approach. But, as technology and human behavior has evolved, so has the search engines’ ability to decipher the difference between good, quality content and shallow, pieced-together content littered with a specific keyword.
Keywords do still matter,
but quality content is king.
This is why your number one focus for SEO marketing should be the quality of your website’s content. In an effort to demystify what “quality content” is, we use a measuring stick called E.A.T. to evaluate all web content. When looking at content, make sure it shows:
Expertise: Quality content provides value to the reader because it offers an expert outlook on a topic. It offers deeper insight than content from an amateur because the content creator has built up experience and can speak firsthand about the subject. While readability is important, you should resist the urge to keep all your content surface-level.
Authority: Do you actually know what you’re talking about? We’ve all read online content that gave a bunch of tips and tricks, but no verification that the content creator has the expertise or insight to be giving them in the first place. Statistics (like the ones above) are a great way to show that your content is rooted in reality and not just a hunch.
Trustworthiness: Although trust and authority can overlap in some ways, the main factor for establishing trustworthiness in your content is external linking to similar content from other domains. Search engines like to know that you’re a team player. Linking to other, similar content will not only establish search engine trust, but it will let your audience know you care about them and not just your bottom line.
#2: On-Page SEO
“On-Page SEO” is a term that refers to the often-unseen technical components of your content.
These are typically found in the website code and can serve as the primary means by which a search engine knows what your website is about.
This includes:
- Title tags: What shows up in search results and in the browser window as your site’s title
- Meta descriptions: The brief description under your page title in search results
- Image tags: Alt descriptions that describe what the image is, making it more accessible to image searches
- Structured data: Also known as Schema markup, this tells search engines what the essential parts of your page are
There are several areas of on-page factors to optimize, but the ones above have been shown to have the most impact our a website’s SEO.
#3: Mobile-Friendliness
Back in 2016, Google realized that most web traffic was coming from mobile phones and began using mobile-first indexing for all websites. This means your mobile site is now the way in which Google judges the quality of your website.
This is an often-overlooked aspect of a website’s SEO, since websites are typically built for desktop browsers with the mobile version being an afterthought. With this shift in Google’s indexing process, marketers need to reevaluate their website’s mobile version as a primary means of optimizing their site for mobile best practices.
Here are some high-level tips for mobile SEO:
- Use responsive design: This design shows the same content to both desktop and mobile users by automatically adapting to the size of the screen. This ensures all content is present on your mobile site and is indexed for search engines.
- Aim for faster page speeds: Page load time is more important for mobile users, since the devices are slightly less powerful than desktops. Minifying code and optimizing images can help mobile load times.
- Avoid pop-ups: Pop-ups can be annoying on both desktop and mobile, but they are particularly difficult for mobile users to navigate. As much as you think you may need a pop-up, it may unintentionally cause a roadblock between the user and your website.
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Concerned about your SEO health?
Let us help.
- Get a web health assessment. Our web health assessments are a quick snapshot of the overall SEO health of your site. Assessments are quick to complete, and we’ll even jump on a phone call with you to walk through what we find.
- Do a full SEO audit. Our full SEO audits are a comprehensive deep-dive into every aspect of your website that can affect SEO. We will deliver the results of our audit as well as specific next steps to address any issues we may uncover.
- Develop an ongoing SEO strategy. Search engine algorithms are ever-changing. A healthy SEO strategy is not a one-and-done solution. We recommend an ongoing SEO strategy that includes monthly monitoring of SEO performance, along with quarterly optimizations to keep your site healthy.
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