This week we are going to cover the dark art of Search Engine Optimization.
What’s up Fish Fans! My name is Marcus. You’re watching Marketing Madness, the Blue Fish vlog!
Lately, it seems as if I have been having a lot of conversations with people regarding Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short. I think there is some mystery surrounding SEO in people’s minds. Like it is black magic voodoo type stuff. Well, I am here to help demystify SEO for you.
Let’s start by stating SEO is not just dropping in a plug-in. Many users that are familiar with the WordPress content management system think if they just click a button and install one of the SEO plugins available for WordPress that all of their SEO problems will be solved. Actually, using WordPress could be an issue in and of itself. Let’s pull that apart a little bit.
In order to make this make sense, I have to explain on-page SEO vs off-page SEO. Most people never maximize what they can do with On-Page SEO and just seek to throw money at the problem by engaging in an off-page SEO campaign. On-page SEO is the practice of making sure that the code that makes up the site is as close to perfect as you can get it for your budget. That the keywords you are targeting are dialed-in. That you have an appropriate amount of density of those keywords. That your title tags and headlines on the pages are all on target. That your site performs quickly. And that it is responsive so mobile devices like iPhones and iPads can easily navigate the site. These are all places that should be looked at to start to see your website rank higher in organic search results.
Off-page SEO is all of the things you can do on other sites to build your ranking. Most of the time this involves getting links back to your website. It is important to note that gone are the days when you can just hire a team to build what we used to call Link farms. Google does not appreciate people trying to game the system so you need to make sure that any link building you do is done with care and not just en masse. You can start by making sure all of the links that are in directories where you are listed are correct. While you are at it make sure your Address and Phone number are correct.
Ok, so back to the statement that SEO is not just dropping in a plug-in to a Wordpress site and calling it a day. Because of the way Wordpress operates it often has a lot of code bloat on the website. This causes the site to slow down, and it also makes it difficult for Google to crawl the website and index the content. That is how Google works. They crawl the website with an application, try and make sense of what the site is about by taking a look at the title tags, keywords, keyword density, domain, business name, etc. They store all of that information in their data centers and then when someone does a search they can quickly ascertain whether your website is an appropriate result.
In order to rank quickly and place high in the search results you need to have a website that is fast, has clean code, has the right keywords, uses the right code in the right place, is registered with Google, has links from high ranking websites with the proper authority, and more. Which can be a daunting task for a lot of business owners. Fortunately, we can help…
Well, that’s a wrap for this week! I want to thank you for checking in. Make sure to hit that like button. And if you have any questions or comments leave them down below. If you want to talk about how Blue Fish can help you grow your business just send us a message and we’ll get the conversation started!