If you’re new to the world of SEO, there can be a lot of things about it that can be overwhelming or confusing. These can include everything from best practices to deciding if it’s better to handle SEO in-house or hire a third party to handle the process. Fortunately, numerous experts have come up with their best answers to some of these questions. This blog will serve as a mini-guide to SEO and simplify some of the field’s biggest issues.
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What is SEO?
From a basic level, SEO stands for search engine optimization. It covers the methods used by customers to increase brand visibility through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. This can be separated into various elements ranging from keywords and ad copy to more advanced items like backlinks, title tags, and link structure. By using the best methods to optimize these elements, it increases the likelihood of users finding your website during an online search.
How to Use Keywords In an SEO Campaign?
This can be tricky, as logic would say to add as many keywords as possible, allowing every possible option to be traced to a user’s site. However, the opposite is true: overloading on search terms can result in something called “keyword stuffing”, which can lead to penalization for a campaign. There is really no arbitrary number that is best for keywords. The ideal method is to tailor based on who is being targeted with the campaign and add as needed.
What About Links?
Just like keywords, adding too many links can do more damage to a campaign than is needed. Typically, links for the most important pages or the services that are to be highlighted are the ones that receive links from a search ad. In terms of internal links, or those that go to other areas of your website, you want to have links going to pages with relevant content.
Organic vs. Paid Search?
Anytime you do a typical search for a specific term, the majority of results you will see are of the organic variety. These free results are placed via an algorithm, which is determined by the quality of the landing website based on the quality and the content of the page. Paid - or inorganic - searches usually appear highlighted at the top, bottom, or top of a search results page, depending on the search engine that is being used. These ads can look like the native ads from organic searches and can fit seamlessly within the results page and not feel obtrusive.
When Will You See Results?
While everybody wants their SEO campaign to run perfectly and have high traffic numbers immediately, the truth is that how long a campaign takes to show results can depend on a number of factors. These include:
- The amount of content created for a campaign as well as the quality of elements used
- If the content responds well with audiences
- Whether the site in question is a large link with multiple pages or a smaller site with just a handful of links
Hire Someone or Do It Myself?
While larger firms have their own people to handle search engine marketing and optimization services, for a smaller firm, it depends on what their needs are. Hiring an outside firm to do SEO can be helpful, but if they are not familiar with the latest trends in SEO, it could lead to fewer quality results or worse. Some search engines have guides on the best methods to use with looking for outside SEO professionals.
Goals To Consider?
It can be tempting to look ad a higher amount of web traffic and deem a campaign a success. However, it’s beneficial to look at results in terms of quality. A lot of clicks to a site can be good, but if there are more people that look at a customer’s site longer and look to purchase from that page, that can lead to much better results for the user.
There is a lot to unpack about SEO, from what counts as the best result for a customer to how to approach the steps needed to get there. This article only scratches the surface on how to work with search engine optimization; there are a collection of tips, procedures, tricks, and more designed to help businesses and users of all sizes get the most out of an SEO campaign.