All The Frugal Ladies Personal finance with a feminine touch
SEO is a buzzword in today’s marketing. It seems like every business and blog either buys SEO services, attempts do-it-yourself SEO, or advertises SEO.
With so much hype around SEO, it’s easy to lose sight of what it actually means— if you understood it in the first place, that is.
Thankfully, SEO isn’t too difficult of a concept to understand when it’s explained clearly.
We’re going to walk you through what SEO is and what it does, so you can fully understand what it can offer your website.
What is SEO?
SEO is a common acronym for Search Engine Optimization. Generally, it is defined as a process for increasing the attention your website gets by including specific phrases, words, and links in your posts.
Unlike the advertisements you’d see scrolling on Facebook or your favorite blogs, there’s no payment directly involved in SEO (not including the fees you may pay to get a company to do your SEO for you).
More technically, SEO is a marketing strategy for increasing organic traffic to your target website by increasing how high your website “scores,” or appears, on search engine result pages for specific terms.
SEO uses strategic keywords, reputable links to other websites, and quality content. Let’s break that down:
- Strategic keywords. If you’re running a mommy and me blog, a keyword you’d want to focus on is “parenting.” This is a phrase you’d use often in your posts. When people search “parenting” on Google, you’d want your website to come in as one of the top links because the term is pertinent to your website and would bring interested viewers.
. - Reputable links to other websites. The Google algorithm is designed to raise websites higher in searches when they are commonly linking to other websites that are already scored high. On the other side of the coin, your posts will score higher when other reputable posts link to them.
. - Quality content. For a long time, people tried to play the system and trick the Google algorithm into raising their links higher by cheating. People would upload hundreds of posts with little to no real content that linked to their target post. The Google algorithm at that time was only programed to register the number of pages linking to the post, and so the target webpage would move up in ranking. Now, the Google algorithm is smarter, and is designed to search for that. Make sure you have solid content in your posts and that each post has a reason to exist past just linking to your target website.
What Can SEO do for My Website?
SEO is literally a free way of increasing attention to your website. It can get your website in front of more people that are interested in what you have to say.
Many SEO strategies also increase the usability of your website for your audience, creating a more user-friendly experience.
SEO is quickly becoming everybody’s game rather than the boys club of major corporations that it used to be; that means even if you aren’t using SEO, your competitors are.
SEO is important for anyone with a website: whether it’s an eCommerce store, an online newspaper or a blogger.
If you’re a blogger, you can check my comprehensive SEO guide for bloggers on how to supercharge your optimization.
We know you have a lot of important things to say, and SEO is the way to get heard.
Help! I Don’t Have Time for SEO!
SEO takes a lot of time and energy. That’s why people make entire careers around designing SEO strategies for a multitude of websites and getting them noticed.
Many of the largest companies hire outside SEO services rather than creating an entire internal team to handle their SEO. Almost every chain uses outside SEO services to ensure their websites are being noticed.
Many people think that SEO services are outrageously expensive. While common prices can soar high, many SEO companies offer different levels or packages of services with ranging prices.
If SEO seems to be the right next step to grow your website, check out a few SEO services to find the best fit for you.
