Search Engine Optimization – Page 11

What Are Backlinks and Why Are They Important for your Website?

When looking at factors that help your SEO, everyone always tells you that backlinks are important.

However, what exactly is a backlink?

A backlink is simply a clickable link to your website from another website. They can also be called “inbound links” or “incoming links”. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks. These websites are given a higher priority in the search results for relevant terms.

Why are backlinks important?

Google looks at a backlink to your website as a “vote” or “thumbs up” that the webpage the link is pointing to has quality content. This is because most people would not link their website to a page that they considered bad.

The more backlinks that your website receives, the more “votes” that Google sees you as having. By having many of these “votes”, it’s a signal to the search engines that your website is high quality with good content. Subsequently, it makes the site more trusted by the search engines and improves your site ranking.

How do I get a backlink to my website?

Previously, before Google started guarding against it, people would create spammy, directory sites. You could buy backlinks from these sites for very cheap. This would make it look like you had a quality site very quickly and it would improve your search visibility.

Once Google realized what people were doing, they decided to put a stop to this. Backlinks from reputable online sources are now way more valuable than those spammy links. Websites now have a quality score that is taken into account. For instance, the New York Times website has a much higher reputation score than your typical website.

Building backlinks is definitely a time-consuming task. You want to start building backlinks to your site that have a good reputation score and are relevant to your business.

One really good way to start is to join a local Chamber of Commerce that will give a backlink to their members. Not only will most Chambers have a reputable website, but they are also local to you. This is an indicator to Google as to the location of your business. A similar organization that you can join as a law firm is the local, state or American bar association.

Another good way to build backlinks is to look at the backlink profile of your competitors who are ranking well. You can use a tool such as aHREFs or SEMrush to see a list of their backlinks. Then, you can start attempting to get links at the same places because you know that they are willing to link to businesses similar to yours.

Need help with link building or aren’t sure where to start? Contact us at IFTS! Visit our website, iftsdesign.com or call 412-563-2106.

7 Facts You Need To Know About SEO

When it comes to SEO, there are many factors that determine the way your website is indexed and ranked by the search engines. That in mind, it’s obvious that by focusing on the right SEO techniques, you can maximize your marketing efforts and grow your business into a success.

But other than improving your visibility on the search engines, what else does SEO offer?

Here are 7 facts you should know about SEO and why it’s so important for businesses when trying to take their brand to the next level.

1. Most traffic on websites comes from organic search

Organic search is currently the main source of traffic for websites. While you can direct targeted traffic to your website through paid ads or a social media marketing campaign, being visible on the search engines is always going to work in your favor. With organic search engine optimization (as opposed to pay-per-click ads) people will more easily find your website on search engines while they are looking for a product or service you provide. Making it more likely that they will convert from visitor to customer. No one searches for a product or service that they don’t want, so they’re already in the mood to buy. You just have to stand out among the competition. Additionally, when you rank on the front page of a search engine, you are showing potential consumers the legitimacy of your products or services because of your high ranking.

2. SEO is the best long term strategy to market your business

Results don’t happen overnight – organic search engine optimization takes time, patience, and consistency. While PPC or retargeting campaigns are great ways to reach your audience and sell more of your products, keep in mind that your ads will stop showing up the very moment you stop paying for them. With search engine optimization, that doesn’t happen. If your website is well optimized using the best SEO practices, it should continue to show up on search engines for months or even years to come.

3. Good SEO is NOT expensive

Contrary to what many think, SEO is relatively cheap, considering the payoff. If you were reluctant to spend money to optimize your website for search, think of SEO as an investment. The sooner you invest in good SEO implementation, the sooner you’ll gain more visibility on Google and grow your brand for the long haul.

4. SEO best practices are constantly changing

Did you know that ‘pausing’ an SEO campaign for too long can have a negative effect? While it’s true that SEO is a long term strategy to rank your business, what’s also true is that the search world is always changing. Google alone is known to make often algorithm changes. This means that, if you fall behind, getting back on track may be quite the challenge.

5. SEO and User Experience are related

Few people realize that today, user experience is a big part of ranking well on search engines. Google already knows what a positive user experience looks like on a website and how to spot a negative one. The better your website is structured, the more likely it will gain more visibility.

Google and other search engines take hundreds of factors into account when determining which pages rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs). With that being said, today, elements of user experience have been rolled into SEO best practices. How easy is your site to navigate? Do you have quality content that makes visitors want to stay and engage? Is your site secure, fast and mobile-friendly?

Think of the partnership of SEO and user experience this way: SEO targets search engines and user experience targets your website’s visitors. Both share a common goal of giving users the best experience.

Some common website elements that impact both SEO and user experience are:

-headings

-easy navigation and site structure

-site speed

-mobile experience

6. Great rankings influence conversions

Customers today do a lot of research before buying something – whether it’s a product or a service. This is a big advantage! Not only does good SEO help you rank well in Google, but it allows you to send a positive message about your offer. Using this SEO best practice to outrank your competition will definitely have a positive effect on your conversions.

7. If you’re not on Page 1, you’re losing business

Obviously, if you’re not #1, someone else is! And that means you’re losing business… If you need assistance in improving your SEO, contact us at IFTS and we will help get you on the road to page number 1!

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your website to drive targeted, organic traffic from search engine results pages (SERPs) to your website. Creating high-quality, relevant content that is optimized around specific keywords, building backlinks, and having a properly formatted website are just a few of many common ways you can improve your SEO.

It’s obvious that search engines want to show their users the best results so of course they are going to deliver search results on high-quality, relevant pages. Making your website more attractive to the search engines is what SEO is all about!

What goes into SEO?

The best way to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to your site through organic search engine results is by making changes to the layout of your website as well as the content that is displayed on your site to make it stand out to a search engine.

To understand the true meaning of SEO, let’s break down the three main parts:

Quality of Traffic

The quality of traffic directed to your site is of the utmost importance. Your site can attract numerous visitors, but the only views that matter are the visitors that are genuinely interested in products or services that your business offers.

Quantity of Traffic

Once you have the right people clicking through to your site from search engine results pages, the more traffic the better.

Organic Results

Ad’s make up a significant portion of many search engine results pages. Organic search traffic is any traffic directed to your website that you don’t have to pay for.

Favoring quality over quantity in building your content will result in more clients!

Factors That Impact SEO

There are many elements that can impact your website’s ranking including both on-page and off-page factors. These factors will be discussed in detail below but first, let’s discuss content.

Content Marketing

The type of content produced is going to be the most important factor in attracting the search engines and connecting with site visitors.

Having more relevant, higher quality content pieces on your site, will give you a better chance of being ranked higher on SERP’s by the search engines. Creating content that is engaging to visitors will most likely have them spending quality time on your site.

When creating content that is optimized for specifically for your site visitors as well as search engines, try to relate to your audience and have a variety of content pieces that are most relevant to them.

Examples of content that can be added to your site to help improve your search engine rankings are:

Informative videos
Infographics/visual content
Blog Posts
Linked social media profiles
How-to guides

When creating optimized content for your site that is SEO friendly, be sure to take popular keywords and phrases into consideration. Think about combinations of words and phrases that a typical user would type into a search engine to find answers to their questions or more information on products or services. Creating your content around these certain keywords and phrases will help tremendously with improving your chances of ranking higher on search engine results pages.

Creating brand new, fresh content is another factor that can impact your search engine ranking. Frequently posting new content to your site, updating posts, and adding new information are all ways to keep your content fresh.

On-Page SEO

On page seo factors all have to do with the elements of your own website. The good news here is that these are things you have complete control over! Over time, you can work to improve these factors by optimizing both the content on your site and the HTML source code of a page.

Want to improve your search ranking? Check out these on-page SEO factors that can help do just that:

Title Tag

The most important of all tags on your page is the title tag. The title tag outlines what the page is about; it is what users see on the search engine results pages, and also the words that appear at the top of each tab in your browser.

Meta Description

The meta description tells search engines and helps visitors understand what your site is all about. A well written meta description can create a higher click-through rate with a greater chance of conversions, generating a competitive advantage.

Heading Tags

Headings can be used to represent different sections on your page and should include multiple tags. H1 is the most important tag on the page and you should never have more than one. You can include multiple subheadings; h2’s or h3’s as users scroll down the page to represent different sections.

Image Name & ALT Tags

When using images on your website, make sure to include your keyword in the image name or ALT tag. This is such a great way to help search engines better index your images and they can even appear when users search for images with that certain keyword.

Internal Links

A great way to help search engines learn a lot more about your site is by building internal links to other content on your website. An internal link is a link from one page to another page on the same domain. Internal linking allows users to easily navigate a website and help spread ranking power. Search engines use these links to navigate your website which is important because they will not find a page if there are no links to it.

Off-page SEO

Google and other search engines also take many off-page SEO factors into account when choosing what web pages are going to rank in each position. Off-page SEO is everything that takes place outside of your website, but still contributes to your ranking. You do not have complete control of these off page factors as you did with on-page SEO, but there are effective ways to improve your search engine rankings outside of the factors associated with your website.

The following are some off-page SEO factors that can help improve your search ranking:

Backlinks

Having high quality backlinks to your site is one of the most important factors of off-page SEO. You can get backlinks to your site by engaging in social media activity, influencer marketing, blogging and regularly creating high-quality, shareable content.

Social Activity

Social signals such as likes and shares are another important factor of off-page SEO. Receiving quality shares from influencers is a great way to boost SEO. The more creative, relevant content you post to your site will result in the likeliness of people sharing your content with others.

Category: Search Engine Optimization