Want your website pages to rank well in Google search results withOUT paying for ads? Search engine optimization, known simply as SEO, is how you do that. We’re going to demystify Search Engine Optimization, how it works, why it’s important for your small business, and the basic SEO tenets of on-site and offsite SEO. Let’s go!
We invite you to listen here on our website or from your favorite podcast player. Scroll below for episode summary and other resources.
Episode 8 Summary: Introduction to SEO for Small Business Owners
- SEO is something that can strike fear in the hearts of the average small business owner. Seemingly complex in nature and understanding, search engine optimization is a series of tasks you can complete for every website page, blog post, or product listing you have on your site, to improve the chances of that page, post, or product to show up high in search results when a searcher Googles for whatever it is.
- SEO is for organic search engine rankings, meaning non-paid, whereas those of you who have heard the initialism SEM… which stands for search engine marketing… that refers to paid placement in search results, like Google Ads or BING ads. Another way to differentiate between SEO and SEM is that SEO is a long-term approach whereas SEM gives you immediate ranking results.
- In order to give you an idea of why SEO is important…on the first page of search results alone, the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks.
- One of the reasons why SEO feels very complex is because Google’s search algorithm uses more than 200 factors to rank websites. (backlinko.com)
- The meaning and implications of common SEO terminology including title tag, meta description, ALT text, and permalink.
- By adding in a title tag and meta description to your website pages, you’re providing the information you see when you read through Google search results.
- Each page published on your website is another chance to rank on a new keyword phrase. This is one of the many reasons why blogging is so valuable. Liz likes to say that the more links you’ve published on your website through pages, blog posts, and products, the more fishing lines you’re throwing into the sea of Google.
- SEO is just not content alone; In Google’s newest update, it is also about the customer experience on mobile as well as their website journey.
- “Mobile first” indexing is where it’s at!
- Unique is best with SEO – every page and post should target a different keyword phrase. Don’t worry if you’re in e-commerce, though…Google understands the need for repetition in title tags.
- E-commerce store owners should consider adding product reviews to their product listings.
- Off-site SEO is important, too, though we’d always recommend getting your website in order first. For those of you who already have a Google My Business listing, you’re off to a great start! Relevant directory listings, your social profiles, getting link backs or citations from other sites, etc., are all part of off-site SEO.
- Most every website platform or CMS has a way to take advantage of SEO for your site, even if some CMSes are better than others in this regard. You likely also have some add-on functionality for your website to enhance your site SEO. We encourage you to take a look around inside your site and see what SEO capabilities you have.
Episode 8 Takeaways:
Liz: Start small, don’t be scared, and approach your website SEO just like you’d eat an elephant…one bite at a time!
Ronda: Look at both your mobile site and your desktop site, and complete a site audit. This is a great Step 1 to improving your website SEO.
Resources:
Tiny PNG to minimize the image size of files you plan to upload.
Smush It (WordPress) if you need to minimize the images already on your site.
HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out and is a way to earn citations/links back to your website for free.
Keywords Everywhere for keyword ranking info and keyword alternatives.
Moz Local for directory listing assistance.
Yext for directory listing assistance.
Listen On: Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify
Continue the Conversation:
Liz Jostes – LinkedIn, Website
Ronda VanBuren – LinkedIn, Website
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