Taking part in the Internet world is one great way of expanding the power of your business. However, some businesses think that simply creating a Facebook business page and a website is enough to create a sense of brand awareness—but that couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, that is only the beginning.
To fully explore the power and depths of the Internet, you will have to venture into the world of SEO, where you’ll be talking about effective keywords, optimizing a webpage, and making sure you’ll rank high in the search results of Google. If you’re a beginner in this field, you better read through this article because we are breaking down the process of how search engine optimization actually works with your business.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and this means it is constructing your website well and easy enough for both the users and the search engine bots to understand. However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this since Google’s algorithm tends to change so often that it even happens everyday. So the real challenge lies on your web developers and SEO experts to make sure your website is adaptable to all the changes that might happen, and that each page of your website is relevant enough for your users. Think of it this way: you are more likely to go to the restaurant with the highest reviews and most recommendations than to a bistro that is unheard of—and the same thing can be said about how SEO is applied in daily life.
The changes in SEO
As mentioned above, the algorithm for SEO constantly changes, and the difference of SEO two decades ago compared to how we optimize it these days is quite drastic.
- SEO has changed a lot since the 1990s, where a manual submission of meta keyword tags and keyword stuffing were required in order to rank well in search engines.
- In 2004, link bombing was quite popular with the anchored text, buying links from blog comments and spam injectors were vital in order to gain a leverage in web traffic.
- In 2011, social media marketing became of utter importance as a mainstream method of conducting SEO for business pages, and the same tactic is still applied today. Social media marketing is now hailed as one of the most effective ways of optimizing one’s business.
The Algorithm
Over the course of time, the Google search engine has continually been led by a mathematical formula when it comes to ranking websites based on:
- the quality of the site
- how many sites link back to the webpage
- how much people trust the website
Your job is to make sure that your website continually scores higher than the rest of the other websites in order for it to perform well in the Google rankings—the better you score in each category, the higher your ranking is. To further break down the categories, here’s how it works:
1. Quality
What Google will continually try to do with your website is to make sure the content of your website is of high quality. The more common your content is with other websites, the more it will try to disregard it in the rankings.
Let’s say you are selling bags in the Toronto area.
A lot of other websites are also selling bags, so what makes you distinct from the rest of them? In order to gain a good reputation, you can expound the features on your website to host options such as:
- allowing them to customize their own bags
- offering the option to add details such as metal locks, unique straps, emblems, and patches
- featuring a quiz or test that lets them know which bag suits them the most
The real key is to become a SEO Toronto leader in order to show Google how unique your website is and how it is better among the other websites that also sell bags by offering features the others don’t.
2. Trust
Google doesn’t randomly rank websites on its search results for it is known to only feature the “tried and tested” sites in order to keep its reputation of watching out for its users. In order to stick to this commitment, Google has been known to penalize any stores or websites with poor quality content and bad reviews in order to keep them from ranking higher and deceiving the users. Here are ways you can earn and build Google’s trust:
- get other sites to review you
- be featured in newspaper articles
- let your happy customers leave good reviews
- let other vendors spek of a good relationship with you
- utilize outbound linking
All of these can help you build a better reputation in the eyes of Google.
3. Authority
Your authority will be based on how popular your business is among users and how many people are mentioning, searching, and talking about your brand. You can do this by building a fan base or social network full of active users who have been satisfied clients or customers of your business. Ask them to take pictures of your products, let them put out a good word about your business, or ask them to leave testimonials or comments. These will all keep the interaction on your website going and by establishing that, you will improve your authority in your niche.
- By all means, SEO is basically about proving to the users and search bots that your site is credible based on its great quality, the trust that you have earned among your customer and a client base, and by establishment as an industry authority. By continuing to improve SEO, you will then earn the right to be on Google’s first page of results, among its other highest-ranking sites.
Matthew West is a writer contributing pieces to SEO Toronto the Digital Rocket Fuel. As a technology and digital marketing enthusiast, he understands that sometimes technicalities in the subjects he discusses can be hard to understand. However, he tries to remedy this by making sure his pieces are informative and entertaining. He loves tinkering with his gadgets when he has the time.