SEO stands for Search engine optimization, but what does it truly mean? Optimizing your site for search engines allows them to consume your site’s content as efficiently as possible, allowing new and returning traffic to find your site easier. So, where do you begin? When working with Innereactive on a website design, we will make many of these choices on your behalf to optimize your website SEO or walk you through any decisions needed. If you’re looking to set up a new site or improve on an existing site on your own, here are our tips and tricks!
New Website SEO
When establishing a new website, first sit down and determine what type of traffic you expect and outline your target audience. Narrowing down an audience will allow you to focus on the keywords that will perform best for your needs. For example, suppose you are a brick-and-mortar store looking to optimize for local users. In this case, place less emphasis on globally applicable terms and focus your keywords on geographic features coupled with your industry. (Ex: Eyecare in Detroit, Lawncare in Grand Rapids, etc)
Optimizing Existing SEO
Before making any changes to your SEO, the first step should be establishing a baseline of existing performance. Use this baseline to determine if your changes improved or hurt your site performance. A baseline can be established through a variety of metrics, the easiest being pulled from existing analytics platforms like Google Analytics or Google Search Console. Some of the more important metrics to focus on are:
- New Users
- Returning Users
- Average Engagement Time
- Keyword Results & Ranking
Using the above data points will give you insight into what drives successful performance on your website. If you plan to run a digital ad campaign, keyword results can be invaluable to provide insight into already successful search terms related to your business.
What Affects SEO Optimization?
Search engines place a lot of emphasis on data like keywords and meta descriptions to discover your website content properly. But there is much more that goes into SEO of a site! Many search engines also factor in the frequency and freshness of content, social media presence, backlinking, site mobile usability, etc. So how do you use this knowledge to your benefit?
Blogging
If your industry is suited for it, blogging can be a fantastic way to bring frequent and relevant content to your site. When recognized by search engines, this new and recurring content proves your business is still active and relevant. Coupled with driving new and returning visitors to your site, blogs can be a powerful marketing tool for your business.
Social Media & Backlinking
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin expand your potential website reach and can create a healthy network of backlinks to your site. There are many tools out there to help analyze your existing backlink structure and allow you to identify who is referring traffic to your site. We are a fan of Ahref’s tool, which offers free and paid options for all business scales. Ready to take your social media to the next level with digital advertising? Check out our blog about Paid Social Advertising or reach out to us today!
Mobile Usability
With 4 out of 5 users browsing and shopping on their mobile devices, search engines include metrics like how fast a site loads and how easy it is to use on a mobile device to determine results and rank. If your site is not mobile optimized, you may be losing a lot of potential user engagement. To learn more about how to optimize your website for mobile usage, check out our article about mobile-first design.
As you can see, SEO is a large and complex topic with many aspects to factor in and adjust. If you are interested in improving your website performance and SEO, fill out the form below or subscribe to our blog for future tips and tricks! We are excited to help you grow your business online.
If you are interested in improving your website performance and SEO, fill out the form below or subscribe to our blog for future tips and tricks! We are excited to help you grow your business online.