One More Time, Please: What is SEO and Why Should You Care?
What was the last thing you Googled? Did you get the results you needed? What about the last time you searched your own name- were you at the top of the page? Sometimes it feels like Google has all the answers. But it certainly isn’t a game of chicken or egg; Google is perhaps the most efficient sleuth in history, and it’s our job to lay the breadcrumbs. If you’ve ever engaged with a digital industry you’ve no doubt heard of SEO or search engine optimization. So what is it, and how can you get started on your climb to the top- of your search page, that is.
As information-hungry beings, we naturally gravitate to the most available choice. According to a recent study in Forbes, the first five organic results account for 67.6% of all search clicks. We trust that Google presents us with the most relevant pages, in the most helpful order. So, how does your search engine decide what’s relevant? Imagine a gigantic library of details and information, floating around in the cloud. You’d get pretty close to what’s called the “index,” efficient storage of information for effective retrieval. Your search engine collects these bits of information using “crawlers” or functional arms of the engine. These arms search, or crawl, websites periodically to search for new and relevant information to add to its index. From there, the information is assessed, ranked, and stored for later. This process includes a system of over 200 factors to determine the relevance of a webpage for a particular query. These factors range from the number of keyword mentions, the number of words in your content, and even your sentence structure. And voila! Your page will appear among thousands of others that contain similar or relevant information the next time you search.
You’ll also often see the same companies floating to the top of the page over and over again, with the tell-tale sign of “Ad” next to their link. Google and Facebook ads allow brands to pay for those premium top spots for certain keywords. However, the competition to rank for popular keywords can end up costing you most of your marketing budget, and if you’re a smaller entity that can still fall sound $9,000-10,000 per month. Optimizing your content for targeted keywords is an easy and effective way to boost your ranking- and keep it there!- without excessive marketing spend.
So- where to get started, and what does optimization even mean? Generally speaking, this refers to any actions you can take to help crawlers navigate your website, review your content, and store it at a high rank in the index.
Use the tools at your disposal
Many platforms like Squarespace and WordPress have features built in to help you optimize your site and content for SEO. These include tools to help you assess the efficacy of a blog, insert keywords in photo captions and descriptions, and link back to other related pieces of content. You can learn more about how to use these tools in our Beginner’s Guide to Tackling SEO.
Digital Tip: Make yourself an SEO checklist, and keep it handy on your desktop or printed out nearby to reference every time you make a new post. You can download our SEO checklist as a part of the beginner’s guide.
Keep it coming
Once you optimize a piece of content, the work isn’t over. The key to landing your page and keeping it there is creating regular and consistent content. Not only do crawlers search for keywords and phrases, but they also assess the quality and quantity of your content. The more often you create and update your content, the more credible Google will find your page. Think of it this way: if you published a comprehensive research study on unicorns in 2003, then learned that these animals were actually horses that had been dressed up for a children’s birthday party, you would want to go back and publish a new study on the effects of glitter on regular horses. Otherwise, someone might read your first study and, upon seeing that you had not published a follow-up, they would no longer find you credible.
Even if the fate of the unicorns doesn’t depend on your updated website, it’s a good idea to show Google, and your readers or customers, that your brand is staying up to date and active, whether that means running a sale or publishing a new blog.
Digital Tip: Try creating your content in advance and spacing out the publishing dates. Post or publish on a regular day of the week, or create a content calendar to help you anticipate your launches. Anne Colette Digital content calendars will be available in our next content drop!
The Sweet Spot
While experts will differ on what makes the perfect piece of SEO content, you can follow a few guidelines to set yourself up for success:
A good piece of SEO content will fall around 2,000 words- you can aim for a minimum of 800 to 1,200 if that feels out of reach. Just remember, the shorter your content is, the more often you should be publishing to pick up the slack.
Once you identify your keywords or phrases, choose one to two per piece, and aim to mention it three to four times per piece of content.
Internally link to other articles or pages that use the same keywords on your site. This enriches the crawling process and gives your site more credibility in the eyes of Google.
Now that you’ve put in the work to optimize your content, you want to reap the benefits. Platforms like Squarespace have an analytics page built into your website plan. Here you can find words and phrases for which you rank the highest. You can also learn about your ranking and search volume using free online tools. We love the features from Moz.
Want to up your SEO strategy? Check out the Anne Colette Digital Beginner’s Guide to Tackling SEO. We’ve put together a comprehensive guide to understanding SEO and getting started building your own content strategy, and added inside tips and tricks to elevate your process. We’ve also included our master SEO tracking sheet and video tutorial to help you build out a content plan, schedule future content, and keep track of your ranking data.
