How to Boost Your Online Presence with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
In today’s competitive marketplace, having a captivating online presence makes all the difference when visitors are deciding between you and a competitor. As of January 2020, the total number of websites on the internet is 1.95 billion. Google averages 40,000 searches every second – this equates to 1.2 trillion searches worldwide per year. Is your website going to stand out?
Having prominent SEO (search engine optimization) is the first step in ensuring that your website is found. In order to have the best on-site SEO, you need a fast running, mobile responsive website. Google will place higher value on sites that are fully mobile responsive, and that load quickly. These characteristics are also important for customer experience. About 42% of customers expect a website to load within 2 seconds, or they will leave and not return. Additionally, 51.6% of internet users are surfing the web from their mobile phone, while 4.2% are doing so from their tablet. This means the majority (55.8%) of potential visitors to your website will view it from a screen that is NOT a traditional desktop or laptop computer. Bearing this in mind, it is important that your website both looks great and functions well on ANY size screen it is viewed from.
You can use PageSpeed Insights from Google to check your website’s load speed and to see suggestions from Google on how to speed up your website.
To boost on-site SEO, you must also ensure your website’s content is optimized for search engines. Although you must make sure your content reads well for visitors, your text is also how Google will interpret your website. You’ll need to make sure you include relevant keywords in good quantities and in the right places so that Google knows what your website is about, and that it is a quality site. It is important to note that Google places more value not on an exact match between a searcher’s search terms and the keywords on your website, but on the fact that your website’s content seems to match the intent of the searcher’s inquiry. Think of what exactly your visitors will ask a search engine and strive to answer these questions in detail, while avoiding any “fluffy” content. Extraneous content without real purpose can cause you to lose search engine credibility. You can come up with your top keywords through tools like Keyword Tool or Googles Keyword Planner tool (if you have an Ads account).
What your website says is not the only important thing for Google to read – your website must also say these things in the right places. Ensure you are using page titles, headers, image alt text, and link text & titles throughout your website to highlight for both your visitors and for Google which information is important.
SEO is ever-changing. Once you have optimized your site for search engines, keep up with Google’s requirements to ensure you don’t fall behind. Google wants to deliver the highest quality search results to its users, and it is constantly changing its algorithms to ensure this will happen. Putting in the time to stay on top of your site’s SEO value is important to make sure you will be found in a prospective customer’s search.
For those who don’t have the time to spend on ongoing research and content upgrades, our website maintenance services are an excellent way to keep up with Google. We are also able to offer search engine optimized content writing services to make both Google and your visitors happy.
Be on the lookout for our next article to learn the next step in elevating your online presence – how to achieve striking web design and branding that will set you apart!
Sources:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/page-load-time-conversion-rates
https://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/
https://wpforms.com/the-ultimate-list-of-online-business-statistics/