The acronym SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the process of optimizing your site (and the pages on it) so that it ranks higher in organic search results, meaning results without paid ads. This means if someone were searching for keywords related to your product or service, they would be more likely to click on one of the links to your site than an ad. So let’s say there are two sites selling dog sweaters: store A has paid $5 per click and gets 10 clicks per day while store B isn’t investing any money into advertising but does have SEO optimized pages ranking high in organic results and gets 20 clicks per day. Store B makes much more sales than Store A. Needless to say, Virginia SEO is well worth it, especially when you hire a professional agency like Spark Factory.
SEO is a long term game that can be approached many different ways. To have success you want to have a well-rounded approach that includes onsite optimization, off site optimization, and creating great content.
Step 1: Onsite Optimization
Onsite optimization is taking specific steps to help improve your site’s rankings in search engines. It can be done by using keywords in title tags and meta descriptions as well as improving click through rate (CTR) of organic results on your page.
While it seems insignificant, on page optimization can lead to huge returns for your business. The better optimized your site, the more likely people are to click on results from search engines.
Step 2: Off Page Optimization
Off page optimization is anything that has little to do with you specifically but will help increase your rankings. The most common tactic used by Internet marketers is link building, which allows them to improve their site’s visibility through other sites. However, it can be a very time consuming and tedious process that requires a lot of research and dedication. Link building takes a long time for any productive results because you need to find relevant websites that actually have an audience in order for them to see your link and click on it.
Link building not only generates direct traffic from web users who see your link, but each high quality backlink also gives a site with the potential to rank in search engines. This is because sites hosting these links are already trusted by Google and other search engines, whereas your website may not yet be worthy of a high rank. A high quality backlink raises your site’s trust level, which how Google rates websites with link building.
Doing this type of research often requires more than just surfing the web. It takes time to find out what people want and give it to them so they will want to click on your link and visit your website, but you can also get an edge over other internet marketers by using more than just keywords in articles that you write for blogs or social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. If you build enough high quality link backs to your site, it will give you a better chance of gaining higher Google rankings than others who have not yet built up their link funds.
Another way you can get more high quality backlinks is by placing your ads on other related sites and/or writing free articles for various blogs and directories. A major category head may be more beneficial to you than a simple title if you want people to actually click on the link and read what’s on the page, because they need only scan the list of article titles before clicking.
No matter how much time or money you invest into your website’s rank at Google, there is no guarantee that it will be successful in ways such as attracting new customers or increasing traffic. But if done right, the results will be game ch