SEO is probably the loudest buzzword in online marketing today. It stands for Search Engine Optimization and involves techniques to make a website more search engine friendly so that it will have a higher ranking in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). In other words, it increases the visibility of your site so that your target audience can find it easily. Without good SEO, your website becomes like a forgotten village in the middle of nowhere that few people care to visit.
Imagine that you have a company that sells sunglasses. If someone is searching for sunglasses in Google and types the word “sunglasses”, how many links appear on the SERP? Hundreds, perhaps thousands, and you will see that they are not in any particular order either. Normally, the person doing the search does not bother to look beyond the first two pages. This means that you have very little chance of getting any visitor if the link to your website or blog is below the second page.
To make your website visible to search engines, it has to have informative content written in excellent language and have the right keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases that people use to find your website. For example, if your company sells high end furniture in New York, then your keywords could be ‘high end furniture New York’ or ‘New York high end furniture’. In order to get a high ranking in SERP, you must select your keywords carefully and use them cleverly in your website.
Here are some ways to increase your website’s ranking in SERP:
Be very particular about the quality of content: Search engines are very particular about the quality of language. If they find your website is filled with gibberish, then their spider (special software robots made to find websites) will simply ignore your website. A website with well written content is visited by spiders frequently and given a higher ranking in SERP.
Select your keywords with careful consideration: Keywords are the backbone of SEO. Therefore, you have to select your keywords very carefully. In order to get a higher SERP ranking, your keywords must be narrow and specific. For example, if you offer cleaning services in New York, then it should be something like “New York cleaning” or “cleaning New York”.
Do not overstuff your webpage with keywords: You should use your keywords on each web page. However, there shouldn’t be more than two or three keywords on each page because search engines do not like web pages that are overstuffed with keywords.
Update your website or blog regularly: If your website contains the same content all of the time, the search engine spiders lose interest in it and its SERP ranking plummets. Therefore, you must update your website with fresh content regularly to maintain your ranking.
Finally, SEO is neither a plugin nor a widget that can be added to your website. It is a technique that involves filling your website with quality content and placing the right keywords in the right places. It is not an exact science but may require many trials and errors before hitting on the words and phrases that work.
Do you always use keywords when writing content?
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