Search
Engine
Optimization Explained
In short, search engine optimization is a series of strategies, techniques, and tactics used to build website visibility by expanding on authority and expertise within the industry niche. Building on a comprehensive competitors analysis and keyword research, a strategy of link building and content creation is implemented for optimal search engine ranking results. All the good stuff that gets your website ranking to the top!
What's the difference between
on-page
and off-page SEO
When designing your website, along with user experience, on-page SEO is the main ingredient in a series of techniques for getting your website rankings on the front of the
search engine results pages (SERP’s). This process involves keyword research,
latent semantic indexing (LSI), high quality content, title tags, meta tags, meta descriptions, and building links internally, just to name a few. On-page optimization builds a strong foundation for off-page SEO.
Once your website is built and publishes, your off-page SEO begins through building backlinks to a web page on your site. Backlinks are links from other web pages in forms of keywords connecting the two websites. The more keywords linking to your site from high authority websites the higher your organic web search rankings increase giving you more visibility, more website traffic, and in general, more leads.
How We're Building Front Page Rankings
There are many types of backlinks with local citations usually being the first for building your local rankings. Citations come in several forms but we’ll stick with explaining basic local citations for now. These are also known as local business listings where consumers can find contact information about your business, usually a brief description, along with various other tidbits about your services. Correctly implemented the citations are optimized building greater local search and ranking results.
Guest posting is one of the most reliable and trusted methods for building your backlinks. This process involves articles written about your industry niche with a specific keyword(s) link pointing back to your website and posted on another trusted website blog. This is one of the greatest methods to show Google that others believe in the expertise and authority you bring to your industry.
The uncommonly known backlinks are no follow backlinks. Though these types of links offer little in the way of search engine optimization, it is good to have a small percentage for a healthy mix. No follow backlinks are known to drive in website traffic from time to time when placed on the right high traffic websites.
From here there are several more types of backlinks including infographic, editorial, charitable, educational, and more. We’ll have to get into those in more depth at a later time, as there is much to still go over.
What are Toxic Backlinks
Not all backlinks are created equal and even if a backlink is good today it could be your search engine results rankings drop in the future, and creating a serious optimization problem. Among internal links, updates, and general maintenance, monitoring your backlinks is as important as building them.
Google sets strict guidelines on how backlinks are acquired, types of backlinks, and from where the backlinks are pointing from. Here are a few of the top factors that can create toxic backlinks, get penalized by Google, and cause your rankings to drop.
- Links coming from a spammy website or poor domain profile
- Over optimizing a specific keyword through to many backlinks
- Purchasing backlinks. Google seriously frowns on this one.
- Irrelevant backlinks. Be sure all backlinks have a relevant purpose or your just better off without them.
Pay Per Click vs SEO
Paid advertising, like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, are a great way to run short term goals such as new location opening, or a promotional sale. This is also very effective for a new business website with little or no previous optimizations, as SEO can take up to 90 days to start gaining real visibility. If implemented and managed correctly a PPC campaign can have a great outcome.
However, using this form of paid advertising does have some drawbacks. First, to stay within budget you must carefully choose keywords and service areas usually excluding areas or keywords that are out of budget or may not produce enough leads in an attempt to stay cost effective.
The second drawback to PPC Ads as a long term solution for front page visibility on search engines, it does not optimize the best return on investment. Though the cost between SEO and a PPC campaigns are similar, the differences in the long term campaigns have extremely different ending results. Once a PPC campaign is over your website goes back to the end of the line in the search results.
With SEO your building your
organic search rankings, creating more high yielding keywords, and domain authority. Meaning even if you stop all SEO services you will maintain your rankings and visibility for sometime. How much time depends on several factors, including location and competition. Even if stopping and starting your search engine optimization you always have something you've built on, and to build upon.