What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the work that goes into ranking a website on a search engine like Google. Search engines look at two main things when determining which website gets to sit at the glorified #1 position – Relevance and Trust. Think about what you do when you are looking for answers to your questions – if you don’t have smart friends, you turn to Google. Google does a great job at giving you the best answer because they look at websites with keywords that are related to your search query, and look at how trustworthy those websites are. Bada bing bada boom, Google just answered your question.

How We Build Relevance

When we talk about relevance, we are talking about keyword relevance. This goes into the content that is posted on your website. In order for Google to provide the best answer, you need to have relevant keywords on your site. For example, if you are a shoe company, you would want to focus your keywords around shoes, not pizza.

How We Build Trust

Trust is built through a process called link building. The more websites you have linking back to yours, the more trustworthy you are in the eyes of Google. It’s sort of like asking a group of friends for their vote on the best pizza place in town. You’re going to go with the one that gets the most votes. Google, gives higher priority to websites with more “votes” or backlinks.

Why is SEO Essential?

The world has become completely reliant on the internet to shop for products and services. We use Google to find solutions to our problems – In most cases, if we have an urgent issue, we’ll go with the first viable solution to the problem. This is solution is very commonly found on the first page of Google.

Here’s a real-world example for you: The search term “pizza near me” has a monthly search volume of 74,000 in the city of Chicago alone. Each month, roughly 74,000 people in Chicago are hungry and are looking for pizza, and they probably want it within the next hour. A pizza restaurant, who’s website is ranked #1 on Google for that search term will get 74,000 monthly impressions (eyeballs on the website link) just by having their site ranked. Make sense? Then you know how important it is to optimize your site.

How Long Does SEO Take?

SEO is a long-term strategy. Generally, it takes 4-6 months to reach the top, but this is different for every industry depending on the competition. If you are competing in a niche space, you won’t have much difficulty reaching the top. However, if you are in a highly competitive industry like real estate, it will take a significant amount of time and effort.

The Various Aspects of SEO

Search engine optimization has several aspects – the technical side, the on page work, and the off page work.

Technical SEO

Here, we want to make sure that your site is structured properly so that search engines can read and understand it. Below is what goes into technical SEO:

• crawlability
• HTTPS status codes
• XML sitemap status
• site load time
• mobile optimization
• robots.txt file
• meta description length

On Page SEO (Building Relevance)

This is where we optimize each page of the website to ensure that there are relevant keywords. Below is what goes into on page SEO:

• title tag
• meta description
• headlines
• header tags
• SEO writing
• Image optimization

Off Page SEO (Building Trust)

These are the actions taken off your website that help you rank on search engines. Below is what goes into off-page SEO:

• link building
• social media marketing
• guest blogging
• linked and unlinked brand mentions
• influencer marketing

Do it Yourself or Hire Someone

Both are viable options. Hiring someone would entail a monthly cost, doing it yourself would entail hours spent learning and implementing. So, what is more valuable, your time or your money?

If you said your time is more valuable, then hire us. We handle everything from start to finish so that you don’t have to worry about learning, or implementing. You just reap the benefit of high website traffic. There are hundreds if not thousands of digital marketing companies out there so make sure you do your research before selecting one.

If you have any questions, drop a comment below and we’ll get back to you soon!