Stephanie Donelson

Now that you’ve got a good idea of how to track and measure your website’s performance by setting up your Google Analytics for success, it’s time to talk about one of the most important ways to get traffic to your site.

Internet marketing lingo all seems to be done in acronyms: SEO, SEM, CTA, CMS, CPC, PPC, etc., but SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is an important part of your website’s success and a term that can’t be ignored.

The Moz definition of SEO is: “SEO is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO encompasses both the technical and creative elements required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines. There are many aspects to SEO, from the words on your page to the way other sites link to you on the web. Sometimes SEO is simply a matter of making sure your site is structured in a way that search engines understand.”

SEO foundations

SEO came around to help search engines read, understand, and index websites so they could provide the best results for each searcher’s query. Sites are indexed by search engine crawlers (also called spiders). They find a link to your site and start scanning it and categorizing your content for the right search terms.

The search engine crawlers do not see your site the same we do and can only understand certain elements. For example, we see a gallery and a contact us form on a page, the crawlers can’t understand that – they can only read text and links. They’re also blocked by Flash, Java, certain plug-ins, and iframes so you must have content that’s readable to the crawlers to be indexed correctly and have your site show up in search.

Links

The crawlers follow links to make connections about your site’s content and how other sites are related to your business. By following internal links on your site, the crawler learns more about company and what keyword terms are associated with your site.

Keywords

Another fundamental part of SEO is keywords. Google uses keyword-based indexes to categorize sites and serve the right results to searchers. There are millions of smaller indexes for keywords and keyword phrases, like: helicopters, cruise, walking tour, recipes, and so on.

With more than 3.5 billion searches happening each day on Google, your site needs the right keyword terms within its content to be indexed appropriately and served to searchers when they’re looking for your walking tour.

Focus on keywords that customers will actually use to find your business; there’s no point ranking for terms that have nothing to do with your business and will eventually hurt your site’s performance and provide a bad user experience.

Keywords should be sprinkled in throughout your content – with a focus of having your targeted term near the top of the page – as well as in the title tag and meta description.

While the discipline of SEO started for the search engines, today’s SEO best practices also focus on elements that are important for human visitors to find, read, and understand your website’s content. The search engines want to serve the best results to searchers, so your SEO needs to meet the needs of both.

What technical and creative elements are important for SEO?

• Keywords
• Relevant, original content
• XML Sitemap
• Links
• Schema
• Alt tags
• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• H1s, H2s, H3s, and so on
• Rich snippets
• Social markup
• 301 redirects

All of these elements help your site show up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) and determine how your site ranks – first place, second place, and so on.

Organic search ranking factors

There are more than 200 ranking factors and algorithms that are updated hundreds of times each year in order to provide users with quality, relevant search results. Understanding how the search engines rank your site can help you identify where to focus your SEO efforts.

Some of the biggest updates in the last few years include: Panda, which searches your site for quality content and signs of content spam, Penguin, which looks for unnatural or spammy inbound links, Pigeon, which focuses on local results, and Hummingbird, which identifies a searcher’s intent behind a query to provide fast, relevant results.

10 important search ranking factors

1. Site links: Search engines were built on links. Search engine crawlers or spiders learn about your business and associated keyword terms by following links on and to your site. Have a healthy amount of internal links (pointing to other pages of your own site) and external links (other sites linking to yours).
2. Site age: The age of your site impacts how you rank, with the older the better.
3. Site authority: When it comes to your site’s content, focus on your E.A.T. (Expertise, Authority, and Trust). Let’s say you’re a tailor and you specialize in wedding dresses. Instead of just a page about your services, you could have a blog with tailor tips ,wedding dress care, and best wedding dress shops in your area to show authority in the realm of wedding dresses.
4. Site content + keywords: Rankbrain, a Google AI algorithm, is constantly learning when it comes to reading content. It’s learning synonyms and intent to match the searcher with the best possible content. Keywords are still an important part of your SEO, but the search engines are getting smarter and are able to make connections better between related topics.
5. Site speed: Have you ever sat at your computer and waited for a site to load just to give up after a few seconds? All of us have, and site speed is a big ranking factor. Your site needs to load in a second or you could be losing out on valuable traffic. Google PageSpeed Insights is a great tool to check your site speed and identify improvements.
6. Site signals: These metrics, like site traffic, click-through rate, bounce rate, and time on site show how engaged your website visitors are with your content, and the more engaged they are, the better your site could rank!
7. User experience: Your site’s design is an important ranking factor! Remember, the search engines are always focused on the end customer and ensuring they have a good experience with the results they’re given.
8. Responsive design: Responsive design is its own ranking factor. Your site must have a responsive design – meaning it adapts to whatever screen it’s being shown on – instead of a separate mobile site.
9. No disruptive elements: Pop-ups can be useful in sharing discounts, encouraging email subscribers, or using a chat feature, but too many disruptive elements ruins the user experience and thus brings your ranking down.
10. Brand citations + social signals: Similar to links, the search engines are also looking for non-linked brand citations or mentions of your business. It sees where these mentions are taking place to learn more about your brand. Social signals also play a role in your ranking, so be active on social media!

SEO best practices

Now that we know some of the ways the search engines rank sites, it’s time to cover some SEO best practices.

• Keywords: Have a unique keyword term (generally an activity and location) for each page of your site and focus on long-tail keywords as 52% of online searches are long-tail terms, with three or more words, like “things to do in Denver.”
• Quality content: The average first result in the SERPs has 1,890 words – meaning long-form content is in! Your site could be penalized if you have thin content, or less than 250 words on each page.
• Fresh content: The search engine crawlers are always looking for fresh new links to follow, so be sure to add new content to your site or update existing pages on a regular basis.
• Localized: I mentioned the Pigeon algorithm update earlier as Google places a huge focus on localized results. Make sure your location terms are worked into your site’s content.
• URL structure: Having an SEO-friendly URL structure and by having keywords in your URLs you can boost your site’s overall SEO.
• Title tags: Title tags are the name of the page that shows in the SERPs, make sure it tells the user exactly what that page is about and who you are. Quick tip: Title tags should be 55 characters.
• Meta descriptions: While meta descriptions don’t have a direct impact on your SEO or ranking, they do help searchers determine if they visit your site or not, which improves your click-through rate – a ranking signal! Quick tip: Keep meta descriptions at 160 characters and include keywords.
• H1s, H2s, H3s: These are headers on your website and ideal locations to add in your primary keyword terms. Instead of a heading saying “About Our Tour,” add in a keyword so it reads “Our Incredible Edible Denver Food Tour.”

When it comes to your site’s SEO, focus on making it local with quality location terms and keeping your NAP consistent. NAP is your Name, Address, and Phone Number. NAP is one way the search engines make those connections about your brand online even when your site isn’t linked.

Finally, one more best practice when it comes to SEO is time. Give your site time for keywords to rank and Google to crawl your site. SEO should be treated like an investment – one that pays off over time.

You wouldn’t put your money in the stock market just to pull it back out or change your investing strategy the next day; it’s the same with SEO. Give your keywords time and they’ll provide a long-term ROI.

What hurts your SEO

• Keyword stuffing: Keywords are a foundation of SEO, but in the past keywords were abused and the search engine crawlers became smarter at understanding site content. Today’s best practices for SEO is using a keyword density of 1 – 3%.
• Duplicate content: The crawlers love, love, love fresh and original content! If there are two pages of your site that have the same content, it might look like you’re trying to game the system. Each page of your site should have unique content and keywords. If you’re quoting a paragraph or two from another site, be sure to include a link back to the original source and never just copy content from other sources. We talked earlier about how site age is a ranking factor and how long that site content has been up, so if you need a description of a whale for your whale tour, copying the information from Wikipedia and not linking back could penalize your site.
• Mixed content: Don’t have misleading titles or content on your site just to gain clicks to your site. We want sites to rank for terms that fit your business! For example, you have a blog titled “Free things to do in Denver” but the post is actually sharing information about a restaurant that started in Denver and is now expanding to new locations. The title has nothing to do with the content and will confuse the search engine crawlers.
• Excessive and unnatural links: Like keyword spam, the search engines got better at understanding unnatural links back to your site. The links pointing to your site should be legitimate and relevant – meaning you didn’t pay for a link to your site. The search engines are looking at links from reputable sites, like social media sites or online directories, and links that make sense, like a travel blogger reviewing your tour and adding a link to your site in the post.

Following these best practices puts your website in a good spot with its SEO and should give your site a boost when it comes to how it ranks online.