SEO is one of those spaces that can get a bit confusing, especially for anyone that isn't in this industry. Not to mention Google and other search engines seem to be updating their algorithms weekly to keep us on our toes.
So today I will explain what SEO is for those of you who are not familiar, and then really dive into what is working for us. To keep this week's video from being 97 hours long, we will not be explaining things that an intermediate marketer should already be familiar with.
Let’s start with an explanation of what SEO is just to build a vocabulary for this topic. SEO is defined as the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
One of the most important aspects of SEO that you can directly control is content marketing. Outside of social media, so few people do it correctly on a small business or local level. Every piece of content you create for your website should have a plan and a purpose behind it. For example, if you create an article for your website, you need to make sure that you focus in on your target keyword and its longtail variations.
As if creating content targeting specific keywords was not enough, your content MUST be engaging. Google makes note of whether people searching for those keywords bounce when visiting a link that has been provided in a search result. The act of clicking on a search result and hitting the back button quickly is a bounce. User experience is a critical ranking factor that is heavily weighted by Google.
Mobile responsiveness is more important today than ever! Globally, 52% of website visits are via mobile devices, yet according to Google, 22% of sites are not designed to be responsive. Unfortunately, the majority of these sites are local service providers or mom and pop type entities.
Your website's speed is also a huge factor that matters! Ensure you have a quality hosting provider and, if at all possible, do not purchase shared hosting. This will slow down your website and hurt your overall SEO score. If you Google “Pagespeed Insights” you’ll see a Google Developer link. That page will allow you to test your site to see how you fare.
Now it’s story time… About two years ago, I wrote a blog post about ExpressionEngine vs WordPress vs Drupal vs Joomla. These are common content management systems used to build out websites. I did a deep dive into the functionality of the different system. ExpressionEngine is a CMS used by serious web developers and has an extremely high bar of entry. That made this an extremely niche topic to write about. As I was writing this blog post, I knew I would get some traffic, but I assumed it wouldn't be much since this was such a small niche.
This post was published in 2012. For 4 years it was easily our most visited blog. I just checked, it is now 2018, and it is still consistently in our top 10. Why?
Creating relevant content around your niche is key to winning at SEO. Studies show that getting your website higher in search rankings involves factors that are rooted in relevancy, more so than ever before. The pages that contain the most relevant content to each search are appearing higher in the search results. Previously, this could be manipulated through your title tags, meta tags, etc.… Now the crawl bots are smart enough to read your content and comprehend the content.
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!
Don't forget to check us out everywhere else on the web:
Website - www.bluefishds.com
Facebook - facebook.com/bluefishds
Instagram - instagram.com/bluefishrocks