SEO is an acronym most of us have become very familiar with even if we don’t have a website. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your website for search engines like Google, leading to higher rankings when someone searches for keywords that are relevant to your page.
Once upon a time, good keywords were all that you needed to rank high in search engine results. While keywords are still very important, they are not the end all as they once were. In fact, using them incorrectly (spamming keywords throughout an article or site) can actually hurt you in search rankings.
Keeping up with the constant changes in search engine algorithms to be sure you are using the best strategy can be daunting. Google changes its algorithm pretty much daily. If at all possible, invest in an internet marketing expert who can save you the time and effort. After all, it’s what they are expert at.
If you want to make a go of it on your own, here are some important tips you’ll want to keep in mind.
Use proper slugs – Slugs, are the titles to your pages along with any parameters that are passed. For example, the default slug for a WordPress page would be mydomain.com/p=100. This page name obviously does nothing to help your search rankings as it’s simply a number. You can change the default slug in WordPress to anything of your choosing. For example, this page might be called mydomain.com/improve_SEO/. Now we can actually see what the page might be about and Google can see it too. This will help your search rankings.
Content – Probably the most important thing you can do for your site is establish it as a provider of valuable content. Gone are the days of your website simply being an online commercial for your business. You have to offer something of value to the public in order to get them to visit your site. Google’s algorithm can look at your page and tell whether you are providing valuable content to the reader—it seems like magic but it’s a very complicated algorithm that is way beyond our scope here. Just know that if you don’t provide value to the consumer, your site will not be considered as important as one that does.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re serious about improving SEO on your site, you should read expert articles on the internet or purchase a book from a reputable SEO author. Of course, the best route is to hire a professional while you focus on what you do best for your business.
