SEO: The Do’s and Don’ts of Your Strategy
One of the best ways to help your business thrive is to pay attention to your search engine optimization (SEO) activities. SEO activities include everything you do to increase the visibility of your website among potential customers. A strong SEO effort is usually reflected in a strong rating on search engine results pages (SERPs).
But why is it important to have high rankings on SERPs? According to data from Search Engine Watch illustrated in the chart below, about 67.6% of internet users’ searches occur within the top five search result listings. Being in that top five is critical if you want to generate a significant amount of website traffic.
SEO Strategies
If you’re uncertain about how to approach search engine optimization, try a few of these strategies listed below.
1. Produce high-quality, relevant content: By providing relevant, useful content to users, your links will be shared with greater frequency and will increase in popularity.
2. Make sure you update information frequently: Content that is current will be more relevant and helpful to users. By continuously updating your website, you help maintain your place in the top search results of your category.
3. Consider site speed and device compatibility: Search engines like Google take into account the speed and compatibility of your website with the devices used to access your site. Creating a clean and uncluttered website that is mobile- and tablet-friendly can help boost your rankings on the SERPs.
4. Connect through social media links: Posting useful content on social media is a sure-fire way to create greater visibility for your website. By connecting with customers through channels like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, your content will have a greater reach and will generate more unique, organic page visits.
5. Encourage internal linking and use specific keywords:
The number and quality of websites your content has been shared on often determines your ranking on SERPs. Encouraging organic sharing of your content and sharing content from other trustworthy sites and clients helps boost your rankings. Keyword searches are another viable way to direct the search results of potential customers to your website. Creating search results for more specific phrases (ex. “Brooks Ghost 8” instead of simply “running shoe”) can lead customers searching for a specific product to your website and increase purchases.
Your SEO activities also will be more effective if you avoid certain practices including the following:
1. Keyword stuffing: According to recent research on SEO, Google has refined its search criteria to eliminate word frequency as a factor in search results. Avoid overuse of keywords (ex. repeating “Brooks Ghost 8” several times on a page) and simply provide quality, relevant content about your product, service or company.
2. Excessive, irrelevant linking: Link farming is a technique some web operators use which involves paying to have your website linked to low-quality sites simply to boost your internal linking rating. Google recognizes these phony links and will penalize the link-farmer severely by lowering or even removing their website from the search results pages. Link your site only with other related websites to ensure that Google deems your page ‘trustworthy.’
3. Obnoxious advertisements: Excessive, annoying pop-up advertisements that prevent users from easily accessing the pages on your website actually lower your search results and you will inevitably have a high bounce rate from people who do visit your site.
The Gilson team includes technology experts who can help you with SEO and help improve your rankings on SERPs. For more information about SEO and boosting your ratings, contact a Gilson representative today!
