SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Need To Knows

What is it? SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of organically improving the visibility of your website in a search engine's search results. Said simply, it's more valuable to your business to show up on Page 1 of a Google Search, than page 40. The more frequently a website appears in the search results list, the more traffic it will receive, which means more exposure to your business.

There are 3 foundations your business should be focusing on when it comes to SEO: Content, Links, and Social Media. These three pillars will lay the groundwork for an efficient website.

Content is King. Focus the content on your website and social media platforms on quality. Quality content that is valuable to your customers (and search engine users) will greatly increase your website’s ranking. Use a good headline, keep it short and to the point, and make sure the content is shareable via social media.

Earn Your Links. Links to your website should be earned through endorsements received organically. Paid website links can penalize your site’s search rank. Encourage people externally from your business to share a link to your website or your website’s content. This sends the message of “I recommend this article or website” to your customer base and your customer’s network as well.

Get Social! Share your content with your customer base on popular social media platforms. The use of “likes" on Facebook, “retweets” from Twitter, and “+1s” from Google+ will can spread your content far and wide. Endorsements of your content help increase your social media status. By encouraging these types of endorsements, your content spreads beyond your customer base. This can easily drive traffic back to your business website (great for SEO), as well as grow your social media community.

Take to Twitter. The best reason for using Twitter for your business is simply because your customers use it daily. This platform will help you connect with your customers. Share news, new products, or links to insightful content that your customers will enjoy. Hopefully they will then “retweet” your message, sharing it with their followers as well. There are plenty of free tools available to help you monitor what people are “tweeting” about. Check out Twitter Search to look up your business or topics related to your business.

You and FB. Leveraging Facebook for your business is a no brainer these days. Once you have setup a Facebook Page for your business, you can begin to craft posts with content that is engaging, insightful, or appealing to your customer base. Use the Analytics tools provided for free with your Facebook page to track the performance of your page's content, discover which posts receive the best reaction, and provide insight into the characteristics of your customer base.

Go Google. Similar to a "like" on Facebook, Google's social media platform Google+ users use "+1s" to endorse content they like, find insightful, or deem useful. If you haven't already done so, set up a Google Place page for your local business or a Google+ page for your company. Google indexes this content much quicker as they own the Google+ social network. When your post receives a +1 from a user on the Google+,  this helps to increase your social media status.

Where are you? To find out more about how your business’ web presence is performing, there are plenty of good analytic services available. Moz Local is a great place to start. Simply enter the name of your business and your zip code, and Moz Local will return a graph showing your presence across all of the major search engines including Google, Bing, Facebook, Foursquare, and more.

SEO is all about trust. Trust earned organically. When your content is trusted by search engines, it will rank well. Users will be able to quickly find what they are looking for, share that content with others, and ultimately return for more. Using content, links, and social media to create the best user experience possible will be key to your SEO success.