Digital Marketing 101: SEOs
Marketing is a vast part of the business world. It incorporates sales, research, advertising, and so much more. Here at Water Billboards, we would like to show you how important it is to have marketing and how each one of marketing’s facets comes together. In order to do this, we have to take it one step at a time.
Today we will be discussing SEO’s
SEO stands for search engine optimization and is the process of getting traffic from “free” or “organic” search results. There are many ways to develop your SEOs so today we’ll go over 10 of the most important ways to get your SEO up to par.
Useful and relevant content.
When a customer visits your website they will either stay a while or move on. If your website is stacked with information that may seem a little dry, even though it’s relevant, a customer might not want to stay on your page that long. This can lead to high bounce rates (clicking on a page but not doing anything else). When you provide useful content in an attractive way, it makes visitors and customers more intrigued. Keep your word count 2,000-2,500 words for maximum optimization.
Page loading speed
If a visitor has to wait too long for your page to load, they won’t stay long enough to read it. How can you control page speed? Keep your images clear, but appropriately sized. If an image is properly optimized it should keep its clarity and improve your loading speed. A good image is just as important as page loading speed! if an image is blurry it subtracts credibility from your site.
Image Optimization
Like I stated earlier, an image needs to be clear and appropriately sized. In addition to that, your image should be appropriately titled. Whether the image has a popup caption or a small message next to it, readers want to know what the picture is there for or what the content in the picture is. Try and use keywords that will draw people to your image when they are searching.
Header Tags
A header tag is located between large chunks of information that differs from the previous information. No one enjoys running into a giant paragraph of text with no idea what the content is, so use the header tags to properly break up your content.
Outbound Links
A common misconception is that if you link your website to a different one you will lose viewers to the secondary site. This is not true. Linking your website to another website may actually increase the number of views you have. When you link your website to another website, it is building your credibility to the readers. It allows them to be able to verify your information somewhere else. Another benefit of linking your website to another is that it allows Google to find trust signals in your website improving your SEO for Google.
One thing to keep in mind with linking your website to another is that more is not necessarily better. If you link your content too many times to too many websites, it can make your site seem confusing as well as make it seem like you are unsure of what you are posting about.
Multimedia
In today’s day and age, video marketing is becoming increasingly important. Not only that but to have a modern or updated looking website you should include different platforms of multimedia. This means images, video, audio, and slideshows. The different platforms allow your audience to interact with your website in different ways. Another great thing about videos on your website is that it creates a time revenue. This means that people will stay on your site longer because they are watching your videos.
Multimedia platforms also allow you to show your viewers that you have put quality time and effort into what you are doing. Keep in mind, relevant content is almost as important as multimedia content. If you use multimedia content in the wrong context it can make it seem like you are unsure of how to market yourself.
Broken Links
We’ve all been there. You spend the time searching through google to find what you are looking for. Finally, you get what you think you need, but alas, you are met with a 404: Error message. Broken links are a horrible SEO downer. Actually, the more broken links you have to your site, or if your broken link has not been addressed in quite some time, search engines will often take that as a sign of a neglected or abandoned website. There are plenty of apps out there to make sure that you don’t have any broken links. Test them out and find which one is good for you.
Readability
When writing your blogs, posts, or composing the content of your website, you want to sound educated, but you also want to make sure that your audience does not have to decipher a dissertation to get through it. There are many different factors in your readability. Some of those factors include sentence length, header tags, passive phrasing, paragraph length, and transition words and phrases. All these things add up to make your content either easily readable or hard to read. If you are looking for an app to help you with your readability, check out Yoast SEO.
Layout and Formatting
When a viewer gets to a website, they want to be able to clearly see what is in front of them as well as navigate the pages with ease.
Formatting can dramatically improve a viewers experience of your website. consider these factors in formatting your website or post:
*font size – use a font size that is easy to read but also allows your content to stay on as few pages as possible.
*bold and coloring – use bold font when something is of importance and use color to call attention to information that you might think is relevant to all readers. Use these items sparingly.
*Short paragraphs
*subheadings
The layout also makes a huge difference in how a viewer experiences your page. When setting up your website, consider using smaller phrases for page names as well as subpage names. Speaking of pages, make sure you do not have too many pages. If your website has too many pages, it can get lost on the customer and be considered hard to view.
Contact Us
The contact us page on your website might be the most clicked on the page of your website. This means that it has to be up to snuff and easy to find. Your Contact Us page should include your address, phone number, email, fax, or any other relevant content. The more relevant information shown, the more credible the site seems.
The contact us page also allows the reader to interact with your website, if the information is hard to get to or buried in another page, the customer might not be able to find it. Consider putting a small, nonobtrusive, button on any relevant page, or in the footer. The footer of your website will show up on every page, if the contact us “page” is in the footer, it should always be easy to find.
These are just a few examples of the vast world of SEO. There are many more factors that can contribute to the optimization of your site. These ten tips can boost your SEO fast and with little effort. It is also important to keep in mind that it might be easier to tackle one SEO at a time. If you are just starting out, or don’t have time to sift through all of this on your own, considering getting an SEO app for your website.