SEO or Search Engine Optimisation may have been a foreign word to many small business owners back in 2011 when I first wrote this article. But in the years since we’ve seen SEO put firmly on the agenda for the majority of small businesses. At least those that have a functional online presence.
But despite being on the agenda, what’s your understanding of SEO?
SEO has a number of components, some that are easy to understand, some not so easy. Some that you can do yourself and some that you may need some help.
But essentially the whole practice is to work with the guidelines set out by the major search engines to help them rank your website better. Remember, they are in the business of providing people with the most accurate results as fast as possible.
Here is a basic rundown of the practices that make up SEO and what an SEO agency or marketing company should be doing for your business. It’s certainly not a complete list and unfortunately not a ‘How To’ but it is a snapshot of the industry to make sure you’re better informed.
Sitemaps and Search Engine Submission
A Sitemap is an .xml page that helps the search engines navigate themselves through your website. The better the engines navigate your site the more trusted you come across. A site map should be submitted to the key search engines.
Meta Titles and Descriptions
The Meta Titles and Descriptions were an early factor in telling the search engines exactly what a page is about. They’re considered less of a factor now.
However, they’re still used heavily in search engine results and this is where they can have a significant impact on your search results. If your title and description encourage users to click on your result instead of your competitor’s then this will definitely help.
Link and Citation Building
Link building is the practice of acquiring links from other sites to your own. Previously, it was a case of the more the better, but now we must be careful of the links we acquire to ensure they are quality sites and that they are in context.
Citations are simply instances of your business name, address, and phone number being published on the web. These can be just as important as the inbound links, however be sure to maintain consistency with the exact name, address and phone details.
Further Reading: Are you an Australian business looking to build your citations? Check out our list of the top online business directories. The list is regularly vetted every six months.
Website Performance
The performance of your website is going to play a big part in how well a browser can navigate your site and if it performs badly then the search engines will penalise you.
Your site should navigate well and fast on all devices. This is becoming increasingly important with the rapid rise of mobile searches. Learn more about Google’s mobile-friendly update.
Redirections
Have you ever clicked on a website link and you get a page saying ‘Page not Found’ or something like that?
Well if you have links like that, then you may be penalised again. So Google Webmaster Tools should be monitored for Crawl Errors and 301 Redirects to other pages should be implemented to correct any such errors.
Reducing Duplicate Content
Duplicate content became a huge issue only recently. The key search engines will now penalise you for having duplicate content on different pages, so make sure your content is unique from page to page.
Content
You may have heard the term ‘Content is King’. I would prefer to say ‘User Experience is King’ and within that, well content is pretty damn important.
Producing and publishing content on your website should be done with your user in mind, not search engines. If you produce great content that is valued by users, then Google will know and you will be rewarded. Produce content that no-one cares about and you’re simply going to be wasting your time or potentially hurting your search performance.
Schema Markup
Schema is a markup language accepted and maintained by the big search engines. It basically helps them better understand your content and this has some benefits. Google for instance will use this markup to enhance search results, which will improve your click through rates in the SERPs. Then there’s Google’s Knowledge Graph which pulls some of your markup into the valuable piece of search real estate off to the right.
The Future of SEO?
Google wants to get to a stage where we don’t have to type in a search term to be served results. It wants to foresee what you’re doing and what may be relevant. If you have an Android smartphone you may have received notices of trips you consistently make on specific days. If they know you regularly go somewhere on a Friday and they know, they can send you traffic info to help you on your way.
Further Reading: Check out our article Which SEO Metrics Matter.
P.S. Check out our free website audit tool and get your SEO score.