SEO, or search engine optimization, is a “methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine” — including sites such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Why is Search Engine Optimization Important?
Investing in organic SEO is so important – now more than ever. Your business definitely needs to have an SEO strategy in place if you’re interested in succeeding in terms of online marketing. Search engine optimization remains one of the single most important components of any organization’s branding efforts and online presence.
- Search engines are grabbing more market share. According to Forbes, somewhere between 80-90% of customers now check online reviews prior to making a purchase, and this number is only expected to increase. I know I’m guilty of Yelping before going to any new restaurant!
- It really won’t be long before virtually everyone is searching for products and services online. It comes down to, do you want viewers to be able to locate your business or not? Without SEO in place, people will have a hard time finding you and will instead find your competitors.
- Your competitors are doing it. SEO is a never-ending process so you need to always be moving forward and improving your positions so that you don’t lose ground to a competitor who is. Don’t let your competitors out maneuver you by ignoring this valuable tool for your business!
Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
You should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords throughout every aspect of your site: your titles, content, URLs, and image names. Think about your keywords as search terms — how would someone looking for information on this topic search for it?
But beware: Putting ridiculous amounts of keywords on your site will get you labeled as a spammer, and search engine spiders are programmed to ignore sites guilty of “keyword-stuffing.” Be strategic in your keyword use.
Link Back to Yourself
There’s probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of internal links into your site – it’s an easy way to boost traffic to individual pages.
You should make it standard to link back to your site frequently when creating new content. As with all other SEO approaches, be sure your links are appropriate, and be careful not to cross the line into excessive linking — you don’t want your visitors to get annoyed.
Image Descriptions
Adding an “ALT” tag allows you to include a keyword-rich description for every image in your blog/on your site. The visible text around your images is also valuable for SEO: add captions to all of your pictures and be descriptive with the text that’s around close your images.
Social Media Distribution
Another important SEO strategy is to distribute links of the fresh content on your site across your social networking platforms. Whether displayed on your company’s account, or recommended, re-tweeted, and re-distributed by someone else, this strategy exponentially multiplies the number of places where visitors will view your links.
Why Infinite Reach?
At Infinite Reach, we are website optimization experts! Our team has the experience of placing you exactly where you need to be on the web in order to be found.
From retargeting ads and pay per click to strategic citations and link building to optimized mobile sites, we’re there to keep you in front of your target audience so you can deliver the message you’ve crafted perfectly!
78% of website searches are done on a mobile device and that number keeps growing. Nearly every buying decision starts with an online search and what we’ve found to be true is that mobile users are constantly in “buying mode.” Get noticed. Get ranked. Get More Business.