SEO Basics: Essentials When Optimizing Your Website
What is SEO, Exactly?
The goal of foundational SEO isn’t to cheat or “game” the search engines. The purpose of SEO is to:
Create a great, seamless user experience.
Communicate to the search engines your intentions so they can recommend your website for relevant searches.
What Search Engines Are Looking For
Search engines want to do their jobs as best as possible by referring users to websites and content that is the most relevant to what the user is looking for. So how is relevancy determined?
Content: Is determined by the theme that is being given, the text on the page, and the titles and descriptions that are given.
Performance: How fast is your site and does it work properly?
Authority: Does your site have good enough content to link to or do other authoritative sites use your website as a reference or cite the information that’s available?
User Experience: How does the site look? Is it easy to navigate around? Does it look safe? Does it have a high bounce rate?
What Search Engines Are NOT Looking For
Search engine spiders only have a certain amount of data storage, so if you’re performing shady tactics or trying to trick them, chances are you’re going to hurt yourself in the long run. Items the search engines don’t want are:
Keyword Stuffing: Overuse of keywords on your pages.
Purchased Links: Buying links will get you nowhere when it comes to SEO, so be warned.
Poor User Experience: Make it easy for the user to get around. Too many ads and making it too difficult for people to find content they’re looking for will only increase your bounce rate. If you know your bounce rate it will help determine other information about your site. For example, if it’s 80 percent or higher and you have content on your website, chances are something is wrong.
Know Your Business Model
While this is pretty obvious, so many people tend to not sit down and just focus on what their main goals are. Some questions you need to ask yourself are:
What defines a conversion for you?
Are you selling eyeballs (impressions) or what people click on?
What are your goals?
Do you know your assets and liabilities?
