What is SEO and why do I need it?
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. Ok great, I’m sure you’re glad to know that but then what?
The process of “optimizing” something usually involves taking every single necessary step to ensure its success, whether a website or any other product or service.
To illustrate SEO, let’s take the example of a car.
Let’s say you’re selling your car. It works really well, is very comfortable, clean, safe, and you can provide all maintenance receipts from day one as you were the first owner.
You ensure it’s very clean inside, outside, the engine has been washed by a professional, everything has been checked and is in good working order.
By ensuring every single aspect of your car has been “optimized” for the sale, you’re putting all chances on your side to sell it successfully and honestly, knowing that the future buyer is getting a great deal.
Your website is like your car.
When you put together a great SEO strategy with a professional web designer, you’ll analyze all aspects of your website that contribute to bringing great value to your visitors and ensure they are “optimized” for the best user experience possible.
Great SEO is what we call “natural” or “organic” in comparison to what some SEO companies claim to offer.
Some companies will promise you thousands of links from other websites to yours but this would be the equivalent of cleaning your car and polishing the outside knowing that the engine is not working well and could die at any moment. Not only you’ve focused only on appearance to attract potential buyers for your car but deep inside you, you know that they’re not getting a reliable vehicle and you’re being dishonest.
Fortunately, major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing use very complex and powerful algorithms that can detect if you’re trying to fool them when you generate “fake” links and low quality content.
Where do I start to implement a great SEO strategy?
1First of all, I would recommend to ensure your website is based on a solid and powerful foundation that can support you on the long term. I design all my clients’ websites using WordPress for its flexibility and opportunities for future growth.
This is an important factor to consider in SEO. Using a contemporary platform and code that complies with web standards can go a long way in helping search engines discover your website (i.e. “crawling”) and remembering its content to deliver to visitors looking for it (i.e. “indexing”).
If you’re looking at your “1992-like” website as you’re reading this article, and you’re thinking that your business deserves better, contact us today, we’d be delighted to bring you some ideas and suggestions!
2Second, once you’re ready to rock with a great website that looks fantastic, works well and is easy to use, think about massaging the content to ensure it is concise, precise, to-the-point and provides as much value as possible to your target audience.
Simply put yourself in their shoes and look at your website:
Are you bored after the first paragraph? Can you find what you’re looking for within 2 to 3 clicks maximum? Is the navigation easy to follow, do you always feel like you know where you are on the website? Are you being offered to take action on a regular basis if you want to move forward with what the website has to offer? Imagine if Amazon was to make it very difficult to check out and hide the “Buy now” button as much as possible, would you find your purchase experience satisfying? Probably not.
3Third, please, please please, be careful whom you choose to collaborate with for your SEO strategy! It’s so easy to be caught by “shiny” sales pitches promising you the top of the first page on Google search results!
SEO is not a one-time project but an ongoing strategy you need to invest into if you’re serious about doing business online with your website.
SEO represents the optimization of a plethora of factors such as the URL of a page, its title, the carefully chosen keywords spread throughout the content, high quality images, use of web-compliant code for “easy-reading” by search engines and human beings, high-value content and much more…
Finally…SEO is all about bringing value to your audience. Whatever strategy you put in place that will try tricking search engines algorithms to be on page 1 of Google search results may work for a while but will eventually come back to you negatively. A little like “Karma”…
Remember to be transparent, honest, listen to your customers and tweak your website’s content regularly to ensure it is always “optimized” to provide a great user experience.
What’s your next step?
Well, my own website’s SEO strategy enabled me to move from page 28 to page 1 on Google search results for a highly competitive term “Calgary Web Design” in just 4 months (screenshots can be provided as evidence).
What’s in it for you?
If we collaborate together towards genuinely providing value to your audience, we can improve the ranking of your website on major search engines.
