SEO affects every website online and if you own an online business, you need SEO for your website.
SEO is short for ‘search engine optimization’. A website’s SEO helps to determine just how well it will rank on Google and the other search engines. Put simply, how high up on the results page the link to your website will show for a specific search term.
Does SEO Really Matter For Your Website?
The reason why SEO is important for your website is that good SEO results into more traffic, which can convert into more sales, more email list subscribers, more ads clicked, etc.
SEO has a greater significance for smaller websites as they probably don’t have as much of a budget to pay for advertising. Traffic from search engines is completely free.
Two Types Of SEO
There are two main sub-divisions or areas of SEO. These are on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Both help to make it rank better on search engines. But besides that, they are fairly different. You’ll need a mixture of both on-page and off-page SEO to make your website rank well.
What Is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO relates to the steps you take on your website to optimize it for SEO. This includes:
- Content: All the content material that you publish on your website that includes the keywords that people will use to search for that content will strengthen your on-page SEO. The keywords indicate to the search engines what your content is about, which will then boost your position in the rankings.
- URLs: When you include a keyword in your URL, it optimizes your website’s on-page SEO.
- Images: Images on your website have things called alt-text, which is not visible to your website viewers. You can include keywords in the alt-text that will be picked up by the search engines.
- Site optimization: Your website hosting and design makes a difference to your SEO. Ensure your website is mobile friendly and has a fast loading speed.
Off-Page SEO
This involves a range of steps that can enhance your website’s ranking without changing anything on the site itself. It is often called link building and is a method of building links from other websites back to your website.
Backlinks are a sign of the value of the content on your website. The key aspect is to get links back from quantity websites. Also sharing links to your website from social media will boost your site’s search engine ranking because social media links are viewed as backlinks by the search engines.
