After spending hundreds of dollars to create an outstanding website that’s chocked full of information, photos, and fun, you probably think that your work is done and that nothing is left to do now except wait for traffic to visit your site to admire the hard work that you’ve put into creating this kickass website. You wait, wondering when the implosion of visitors will occur. Yet, the visitors never come. In fact, barely anyone has visited your website and you wonder where you’ve gone wrong.
When the traffic doesn’t come in the way that you anticipated, it can be frustrating and disheartening, to tell the truth of the matter. You’ve seen so many others make it from the start, so why didn’t the same happen for you? The sad reality is that building a website is not enough to divert traffic to your site to earn the reputation and profits that you want, no matter how amazing the site that you’ve created might be. But you shouldn’t let this information bring you down. If you want a website that brings visitors and web traffic in your direction, understand that a website is a part of your marketing strategy and implement the techniques that up the ante to get visitors travelling in your direction.
SEO to the Rescue
Search Engine Optimization, most commonly called SEO, is a process that shows Google your website is valuable. Every website out there is evaluated by SEO standards, so it makes sense to use it to your advantage. There are billions of websites in the virtual world. And approximately 820,000 new websites are created each day. Not all of these sites are worth the time it takes to click on them. Google strives to reduce the search engine rank of these pages and improve the web searcher’s experience by listing the best websites within the first page or two of the search results. Approximately 89% of web searches do not look past the first page of results. So, you can understand even more why it is important that you are listed on this page. If you want your website to rank within a search engine when a visitor searches for specific keywords, you must ensure that SEO is a part of your scheme. Without SEO, you have nothing more than another one of hundreds of thousands of websites that really don’t matter to anyone else because no one knows they exist.
But exactly what is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization uses a combination of keywords and keyword-rich, customer-written content to determine the worth of your website. The best SEO also uses other techniques to deliver results, though these are by far the most important. Your website must include the keywords that Google looks for and have informative content that provides the audience with value. Customers visit websites to find out more information and to make purchases. When you give them the best of best world and use SEO keywords, you’ve done everything possible to create a searchable site that stands out from the rest.
Google uses what is known as search engine spiders to crawl your website searching for these keywords and for valuable content. Spiders do not see websites the same way as you and I. There’s a variety of things that can cause the website to be uncrawlable by the search engine spiders, which means that your site cannot be asked to decide its best placement.
Content marketing feeds off SEO and SEO feeds off of content marketing. They go hand-in-hand like toast and jelly and you frankly need them both to succeed. If you stop with content marketing and assume that it’s going to get you where you want to be, you are sadly mistaken. Creating a worthwhile website is an ongoing process that you must continually strive to reach because there’s always another company coming in that isn’t afraid to put in the effort to build a solid name and reputation using SEO.
Simply posting your information on a website will not ever get the desired outcome. You must always ensure that each page of your website is fully optimized for SEO. This means that you need fantastic customer-oriented content, but that your headers, metadata, and photos are all up to part with the latest SEO practices. Once this is done, you need to make sure the internet knows your content is there. This is done when you link your site and complete various social actions.
Build Social Actions for Your Website
Posting blogs and articles to your social media pages is all that it takes to complete social actions that get your website name out there. Facebook and Twitter are two of the most search-engine friendly social media sites around and YouTube has one of the largest search engines around. Use as many of these sites as possible to post your links and engage with fans and potential customers. Social media is easy to use and so much fun! There are also tools available on each of the social media sites that can give your content and website a boost when used correctly. When you’re posting on social media and otherwise using the sites to your advantage, it is easy to improve your ranking of particular keywords and get more traffic visiting your website. Approximately 80% of the world uses social media so it is easy to understand why it is so important to include yourself in the fun.
Links to Blogs- Build It!
It is expected that your website includes a blog. If not, go back and make this update. A blog is a great way to reach your audience with information that deems you an industry expert. Furthermore, a blog helps you better rank within the search engines. Once you’ve created your blog, linking it to various sources is the next step. Links are like a show of hands, or a voting system if you will, that lets the audience decide how much they like a particular site. But, don’t waste your time with the hands that don’t count. Focus on linking your blog posts to industry-relevant names that build better engagement and don’t make your website look spammy or untrustworthy.
SEO Delivers Results
When building a website, don’t get lost in a Field of Dreams and think that content is all that you need to get the attention that your company deserves for success. Even the king of content cannot compete when SEO is not a part of the scheme. Make sure that SEO is a part of the way that you market your website and you will get results. A little effort goes a long way in today’s digital world!
