SEO (search engine optimization) is the method by which search engines (i.e. Google) select the links that appear in their results. Google wants to ensure its users receive the best possible results for their search and the better their experience searching for you — from the relevancy of your content to user experience — the more likely you will be rewarded with higher rankings (i.e. your website appearing as one of the first few results in a search).
Google would love to believe that the only way to rank high is to pay for it; while it’s true that pay-per-click advertising will net you increased traffic and help your website get found faster, there are plenty of steps you can take that will boost your organic search results without incurring costs. We recommend taking these organic steps first before considering pay-per-click as it’s a good practice to have in place for any site. Why not optimize first for natural SEO and get all the free traffic you can possibly handle before spending marketing dollars for paid traffic?
Top 10 tips to increase organic traffic to your website:
1. It’s all about ranking: Instead of obsessing over where you rank, focus on how relevant and useful your content is to your customers. A huge misconception is that the higher you rank on Google, the more traffic you will get. It is true that many more people will see your website if you rank highly for a particular search term, but if that term isn’t relevant to what you do or sell, what difference will it make? Choose your focus keywords wisely and write intelligently.
2. Link building: Building links is still an important quantifier for SEO ranking — but focus on the quality of the links rather than the quantity.
3. Safety first: Part of a longterm Google plan is rate website that are HTTPS (the “s” standing for SSL, or secure sockets layer) which signifies that your connection is encrypted and more secure than those who are simply HTTP. Now is the time to secure your site.
4. Introduce yourself: Meta descriptions have no effect on your SEO, but that doesn’t mean they are not important. Meta descriptions describe what the content of your website is about — your short introduction on search engine results pages. Their value lies in convincing searchers to click-through to your website, and that makes them extremely important.
5. First impressions: Your home page content is the gateway to your business — who you are, what you do / sell, where you are and next steps customers should take. Visitors should feel satisfied that they are getting the information they need — not too little (website with no home page content), or so much they leave feeling overwhelmed.
6. Headlines: Header tags, which are your page headlines beginning with the biggest, boldest text which indicates to Google what your page content is about, are H1 tags. Subheads that fall beneath the headlines in size, boldness and relevancy are H2 tags and so forth down the line. This organizes your content and is recognized by bots who crawl your website. Therefore, your H1 tag is the most important text and should contain your focus keywords, followed by your additional headers in order of relevancy.
7. Images: Crawlers can’t read images, so pay attention to your image ALT text which should contain keywords that relate to the content surrounding it. Another tip is to always name your image files with text related to your content before you upload them.
8. Sitemaps: Best practices call for you to have a sitemap to ensure Google will find all of your pages. Another step is to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to ensure that your sitemap is crawled regularly, boosting your SEO.
9. Go local: Local SEO is a huge topic and more important than you may think. If you are a local business, you should immediately register your website with Google Business (and also Bing Places).
10. Website speed: How quickly your website loads matters to Google — and to your visitors. It’s proven that 1 in 4 visitors will abandon a website it if takes more than 4 seconds to load; optimizing your site for speed will help you engage more visitors before navigating away if it takes too long to load.
One last tip I’d like to leave you with is this: I recommend thinking long and hard before handing over a marketing task as strategic as SEO optimization (which involves understanding of best practices and marketing expertise) to your IT or web developer. While there are some technical aspects to SEO work, it is far more than just technical savvy to effectively work on your company’s SEO. Should you require it, Elements has both the technical and the marketing know-how to help you navigate the ever-changing landscape of SEO optimization.
Let’s get started.
—Amy
