What is SEO?
SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization."
It is, essentially, the crumbs, the clues, the road signs bots and algorithms use to direct traffic on the internet from a search query on Google or another search engine.
There are many layers of SEO from the basic to the coded to the content to the nuanced.
Matt Silvers, founder of Miami-based seo4anyone.com, joins us to relay 4 Basic SEO Essentials anyone with a website should be aware of and implement.
LOVAGE INC.: Hey Matt - Thanks for joining us to chat Basic SEO. How many tips do you have for us, today?
SEO4ANYONE: Glad to be here. I've got four SEO tips that I prepared for you...
1. CONTENT IS KING
Content on your website includes copy (i.e. written material), photographs, graphics, and videos
SEO4ANYONE: Number 1 - Make sure your content is unique.
There's a big tendency to look at what your competitors doing and sort of copy it and just regurgitate it. Google is getting very, very good at semantic language verification. So you want to keep it as unique as you can.
These days the bots want deep content.
So the old days of 500 words on a page is gone. They want much more detail within the same page. And it should try to be authoritative where you're actually providing deep data supported with tables, graphs, even supportive videos.
Then have text, around its corresponding element, breaking down what is in those tables, graphs, videos, photos. Make sure you have a title of whatever the table or graph or photo is, right near it.
So, the piece of media should be embedded around the content that it's giving more detail to.
LOVAGE INC.: Let me ask you a question on that - we live in a scannable culture and people will just glance at things. Piles of information is often a deterrent. On our customer's websites, we spend lots of time honing content and copy so it is readily scannable.
SEO4ANYONE: Right - So, I don't mean paragraphs. I mean like bullets, bullets, tables, graphs, things that break up the page, for sure.
Like, you know - with today's LinkedIn world, you put a single sentence on every line and that's it. You don't even do a paragraph anymore. So same thing on the website, keep it all scannable, lots of headings, lots of subheadings.
As, people get started with trying to improve their search visibility, they go all over the place - oh, I want this, I want that. I want them to pick one theme and just focus on that for a few months and write as much supportive content about that single theme as you can.
And so what we recommend is called a pillar cluster strategy. So your, your pillar is the top theme that you're talking about. And then you write all this other cluster strategy, all these separate little blog posts, social media posts, videos, supporting that one theme.
And you link all those other topics to the one major parent of the pillar - Google loves that type of structure.
It helps your client focus on your specific offering and communication of that offering, as well.
2. FOCUSED NAVIGATION
Be Deliberate With Website Navigation
SEO4ANYONE: From a user experience and from a search visibility standpoint... if you make it really easily linkable for your customers to find where they are going around your website - that is going to be the same thing that Google sees when it indexes the site.
You want to navigate people simply and easily - wherever you're trying to point them.
LOVAGE INC.: What we tell our customers is we/they want to control the visitor journey and pathways rather than giving lots of options for website visitors to get lost, bored, or confused. A focused, purposeful navigation path catered to the core customer.
SEO4ANYONE: Yes, exactly.
3. CLEAN WEBSITE STRUCTURE
On-Page SEO - Keep It Tidy and Healthy
SEO4ANYONE: So you can go to SEMrush, and run a free report, right? For the health of your website.
SEMrush it will help you find broken links, orphaned pages, redirects that are in there that shouldn't be...
Basically, you want to make it super simple for Google to crawl your page, do a quick review of your site map.
Make sure that your robots TXT file is not blocking pages that you want Google to find. You'd actually be amazed how many people have a mess that stops Google from indexing pages of their site.
4. LONG-TAIL KEYWORDS
Know Your Competition - Find The Low-Hanging Fruit
SEO4ANYONE: When I say, "Know Your Competition," I mean not just from a competitive standpoint but from a search standpoint.
For core keywords, big companies will rank at the top of search results. But for potentially longer-tail, keywords - you have a chance for those.
Long-tail keywords are more specific search terms.
EXAMPLE:
"Tires" is a core keyword.
"Tire Shop in East Dallas" or "North Miami Tire Repair" are long-tail keywords - they are more specific.
If you have any kind of geography your clients are coming from, make sure you do specific searches related to geography so that you know how your ranking in different locations as well.
There are probably a handful of more specialized keywords you are ranking maybe seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven in search results.
With that low-hanging fruit you can do a bunch of work around those long-tail keywords and probably get them in the top two or three.
If you're already ranking somewhat with that keyword - then it's easier to move up. You get quicker results from those low-hanging fruit items and you'll feel better about yourself. We all want that!
Thank you, Matt! These are very useful Basic SEO Tips anyone can understand. Want help from the pros? Visit Matt's Miami-based SEO Company at SEO4ANYONE.COM.
LOVAGE INC.
214-883-8374
hello@lovageinc.com