You’ve probably heard the term SEO more than once or twice. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the effort to improve the quantity and quality if traffic to your website from users who have performed relevant searches on search engines. Basically, it means you didn’t pay directly to show up on Google, Bing or any other search engine. While SEO may sound simple enough, there’s actually a science and an art to doing it right.

The Science of SEO

SEO consists of primarily two types of tactics: on-site and off-site. On-site includes improving the content, structure and code on your website. Off-site includes increasing the links and mentions of your website and business on other sites relevant to your business and useful to your customers.

There’s nothing random about how your business, or any search term for that matter, shows up on a search engine. Whether it’s Google, Yahoo, or something else, search engines follow an intricate, almost always changing set of rules and algorithms to rank your website pages. Google fields more than 2 million searches every minute. In today’s digital world, it’s imperative to know how to increase your visibility on search engines if your brand is going to show up in search.

Much of how your web content gets ranked, and therefore helps you show up in search, depends on the quality and relevance of the content. While keywords, proper tagging, and page structure all play a role, a focus on your customers and providing them the most relevant and helpful content is the foundation of a good SEO strategy.

For some of the more detailed ins and outs of how to best set up your website to make it search-friendly, consult with one of our qualified marketing advisers. You can also download our free Guide to Digital Marketing to learn more!

RELATED: What’s the difference between SEO and SEM?

Top 8 SEO Guidelines

So how does all of this mesh into a cohesive SEO strategy? There are eight guidelines to follow that will help increase your rankings.

  1. Backlinks: These are a strong indication of authority. When considering your SEO rankings, ensure there is a high volume of external domains linking back to your website.
  2. Click-through Rate: An increase in click-through rates on your landing page results in a boost of it’s overall SEO value.
  3. Mobile Optimization: In today’s world, you should always be developing for mobile, first. It will save you plenty of headaches in the end. It’s also a major factor that many search engines consider when ranking web pages.
  4. Page Load Time: The amount of time it takes a page to load impacts its rankings. Be sure to compress resources (scripts, images and CSS files) so the page will load faster.
  5. Commonality: Identify common features on your page, and include these specific terms and phrases in the content on the page.
  6. Content: Include enough content on the page to satisfy the topic and purpose of the page to enhance overall quality.
  7. Anchor Text: Ensure your backlinks’ anchor text is relevant to what your landing page is all about.
  8. Keywords: Use quality keywords in the page title, meta description, and the page’s body content

Need to learn more about SEO guidelines? Give us a call at 904.359.4318, or fill out our contact form. You can also download our Guide to Digital Marketing to learn more!

Like what you read? Looking for additional tips and tricks to help your small or medium-sized business succeed? Check out more of our blog posts here.

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