SEO Basics – What You Need to Know

There is so much information on the web for SEO and how to get to the top of Google and Bing. The purpose of this article is to provide you with what you really need to know. This article does not focus on any technical improvements, but rather to help create your SEO strategy.

The most important SEO tip is to make your website valuable and easy to use.  The Search Engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) business is to deliver people to the most valuable/useful website for the keywords they entered. If you create a valuable website Google will like it and your users will like it. Some companies tend to focus on stuffing keywords in their content, but as soon as you start taking away from a good user experience you will see your ranking go down. You want to make sure that you have selected a few keywords to focus on and you use them as they make sense to a person who is reading your website. Use your keywords in titles, headings, and links so both Google and the user understand what your site is about.

Another important aspect is having trusted, relevant sites linking to your site. A few things to consider:

Are relevant websites linking to your site? You do not want irrelevant sites linking to you (a hockey site that links to a flower store is not a good link). The more relevant sites that link to you, the more authoritative Google will see you. This means that both other people and the search engines see you as an expert, therefore you will rank higher.

As for social media, this focuses more on what other people are saying about you. Are lots of people linking to your website. This is the same concept as above – the more people that link to you, the more authoritative you will be seen.

The best thing about SEO is that it is essentially free advertising. 

At the end of the day, SEO is simple. Create really good, high-value content, user keywords, and localize content (if you sell locally, use your city/town name with your keywords) where it makes sense. Don’t stuff keywords everywhere. Keep the content fresh and show that you are an expert in your subject. If you have good content people will link to your site and will share your content – when this happens Google will rank you higher because clearly you will be seen as providing value to searchers (Google’s customers).

Activity: 

Review your page titles and headers to include keywords and your city/town name (If you are a local business). 

Ensure that you are not keyword stuffing – does your content flow and make sense to the end-user?

Ask people what they search to find your website and adjust your keywords if people use different terms to find/describe your business

Create a blog or knowledge center to create quality content that shows you are an expert in your subject