SEO: How Optimizing your Site can Promote your Content
By Morgan Topol
What Is SEO?
As the internet becomes increasingly integrated with professional life, it is imperative that you put effort into your website’s SEO in order to maintain the credibility of your content.
SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to the process of improving your website’s visibility within a search engine. SEO increases the exposure of your brand and the likelihood of audience engagement.
How SEO Makes Content Discoverable
SEO is complex and ever-changing, but the general process is a consistent one.
First, search engines like Google use bots to “crawl” web pages, collecting information and storing it in an index. Then, algorithms analyze the index and rank the web pages based on hundreds of various criteria in order to determine the order in which the pages appear in the search results, a process called “ranking.”
In order to be discoverable online, your website’s content needs to align with your audience’s frequent search queries, or else you risk your website not being ranked well by the algorithm. If your content doesn’t pertain to what your audience is searching for, they will have no reason to interact with it.
That’s why your SEO needs to be up to par with that of your competitors, or you risk consumers missing out on what your business or brand has to offer. Even basic knowledge of SEO can go a long way in giving your online content the engagement it needs to thrive.
Understanding Your Audience
When tending to SEO, it’s important to understand what your audience is searching for, the words they’re using and the type of content they want to consume. If you create solid content that matches often searched keywords, your traffic will snowball overtime because it sufficiently answers the frequent queries of your target audience.
If your content isn’t relevant to what your audience is looking for online, your target audience most likely won’t engage with your content again.
Even if your content is relevant to your target audience, it’ll still only be visible if it’s indexed correctly. That’s why another important factor in SEO quality is crawl accessibility, or the ability of search engines to read the information on your website and arrange it correctly in the index. Correctly indexed content ensures that the content responds to the correct search query, rather than appearing in search results that have little to do with what your website has to offer.
Other important criteria for successful SEO include how compelling the content is, the quality of the website design, user-friendliness, the amount of amplifiable or share-worthy content and an appropriate title and URL. Excelling in these areas are all ways to enhance your SEO organically, meaning without payment.
SEO Can Also Do Harm
Some people use strategies that attempt to trick search engines into thinking their content is something that it isn’t.
This is called “Black Hat SEO”, a set of practices that are used to increase a site or page’s rank in search engines through means that violate the search engines’ terms of service. Although it can be successful, engaging in “Black Hat SEO” puts your website at risk of being penalized or removed from the search results altogether.
Instead of trying to fool search engines, try to make sure that your site fulfills your audience’s intent – let your content speak for itself.
Simply cleaning up page titles, links and other aspects of your site will improve your SEO significantly. Again, even just a small amount of SEO work can achieve promotional wonders for your content, without putting your finances or business at risk.
Looking to improve your SEO?
1893 Brand Studio’s Web Development team consists of experienced web designers fluent in CSS, HTML, Javascript, SQL and other coding languages, meaning they can identify effective ways to optimize your website in accordance to your brand or business. Our Storytelling team can also help your SEO by evaluating and improving the written content of your website.
With our help, we can ensure that your website is current, professional, and can provide your audience with a great user experience.
