Search Engine Optimization, known industry-wide as SEO, is a set of practices designed to optimize your website and increase visibility and ranking on search engine
results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords and phrases. On the surface, it seems easy. Oh, yeah, optimize our site so people find us.
The goal of SEO is to drive organic traffic to your website. SEO improves your online presence and establishes you as a thought leader, which helps attract more potential customers. Curious about SEO and how it can improve your business? Mid-West Family Madison has what you need to know.
Keyword Research
SEO starts with keyword research. We identify the terms or phrases people use when searching for your products, services, or information related to your website's content.
Once you establish the keywords you want to rank for, you can incorporate them throughout your SEO strategy, optimizing your website for those words and phrases.
On-Page Optimization
To make your website search engine friendly, you'll need to optimize a variety of elements on your website. These include:
- Headings: We incorporate heading tags like H1, H2, and H3 throughout your website in appropriate places to help structure your content and make it easy to read.
- Title tags: This means creating unique titles for each page. These include targeted keywords.
- Meta descriptions: Your web pages should include meta descriptions that contain relevant keywords.
- URL structure: Each page must have a clean, descriptive URL. These should also incorporate keywords throughout to improve search engine ranking.
- Image optimization: You'll want to include at least a few images on your site. Best practices optimize them with filenames and alt tags with keywords.
- Keyword usage: We write content to incorporate your chosen keywords naturally throughout your site content. Keyword stuffing is a frowned-upon practice that can cause penalties from search engines.
These elements build upon each other to create a strong SEO strategy.
Off-Page Optimization
Your SEO strategy does not end when a user navigates away from your website. Off-page optimization involves activities outside your website to actively improve your site's authority and reputation.
Primarily, this includes link-building. Adding backlinks from other authoritative websites serves as "votes of confidence" for your site and signals search engines that your content is high-quality.
Technical SEO
Your website must work properly to succeed and grow higher in search engine rankings. Your website must have a solid technical foundation, including addressing site speed, secure HTTPS connection, mobile-friendliness, and proper use of canonical tags.
Content Creation
Content marketing is essential for long-term lead generation as well as for SEO. When you create and publish content your customers need and spark their interest, you will increase your chances of attracting organic traffic and earning more customers.
Additionally, creating well-thought-out and interesting content will increase the chances of earning backlinks naturally.
User Experience
Visitors quickly scroll away from your site if they cannot use it easily. Time spent on the customer journey and the user experience, including page load speed, easy navigation, and mobile responsiveness, will pay off triple in the long run.
Remember, many potential customers could be accessing your site through a smartphone or other mobile device, and you will want to make sure they have just as good of an experience as a user on a laptop.
Search Engine Crawling and Indexing
Search engines use automated bots known as crawlers to comb the internet and find new content. This content is then indexed, meaning that it is added to the search engine's database and can appear in search results.
For this reason, you should regularly add new content to your website. A fantastic way to do this is by writing a blog. Blogs are the perfect vehicle to update your customers and clients with engaging, relevant content.
Algorithm Updates
Staying on top of algorithm changes is tricky, but it's a tactic used by search engines to improve search results and combat spam.
Working with Digital Specialists to stay abreast of these algorithm changes so you won’t be taken off guard when a search engine like Google decides to launch a major update.
Get Personalized SEO Support from Mid-West Family
Search engine optimization is an evolving process that grows with your company. Maintaining high rankings takes a lot of time and effort. Still, when you focus on providing valuable content and a top-notch user experience, you will reap the rewards, gaining more customers and establishing your business as a thought leader. Mid-West Family Madison can be your SEO hero! Contact us today to learn how we can help you develop your custom SEO strategy.
