You are probably already aware of the fact that a well-made website is a great way for a company to show its self-off and increase its customer base. However, that well-made website is not going to do any good if no one ever sees it. A business cannot just have a good-looking site anymore, they also need to make sure that it is easy to find. One of the best ways to do that is through search engine optimization or SEO. This is the process of making a website more likely to be the appear towards the top of a search engines results page or SERP.
Of course, your company's webpage appearing at the top of a SERP means being seen first. This also means that potential customers can consider your offers earlier. However, if your SERP rank is low, a potential customer might not see your webpage at all. 71% of people making a search never scroll past the first page of results… and on top of that, the first five results account for 68% of what people click on. These statistics suggest that if you want people to see your company's website then you need to get it to the top of SERPs, and one of the best ways to do that is through SEO.
Some of the easier more outdated ways to implement SEO into your site was through keywords and alt text. Keywords are simply just words that someone might search and relate to your site. So, if you sell jars and someone is looking for jars to make pickles with, when the word jar appears on your site that would be a keyword. Back in the early days of the internet keywords were often abused by people who would repeat keywords may times but hide them, so they were not visible to humans who viewed their site, but the search engine still saw all the occurrences of the keyword and bumped up the site in the results page. Modern day search engines do not do this, but you should still add keywords to your site, just let them show up naturally where they are appropriate. Adding alt text is another easy step to help SEO. They are simply descriptions of pictures that you have on your site. Search engines cannot tell what a picture is about, to them all pictures are practically the same. That is where alt text comes into play, if you have a picture on your site of your jar being used to make pickles you could add alt text to it that says “Pickle Jar” that way instead of just seeing a picture the search engine sees a picture that is labeled “Pickle Jar” and that label can function as a keyword.
Now-a-days, the most effective way to increase your SEO is to show Google that you have authority in your industry. This can be done through a series of different methods. First is establishing a blog where you can prove that you are a thought leader on topics that are relevant to your company. These posts can link to other blog posts and help build a network of ideas that explain your service or product. This could be a topic cluster. Google has changed some of its algorithm recently to favor topic-based content. For example, if you want to talk about internet security, and you have posts about antiviruses and malware then those all can help establish this topic of internet security. A pillar page is the place where these posts can all be referenced to help Google and users alike find the information they need. It is a broad post over the topic with links to other posts that drill down. Read more about topic clusters here. The other methods are off-page SEO or link building. An example of this is having other sites link to your site. Sites with high authority with Google already will help you out more than lower authority sites. Facebook is ranked high in the eyes of Google, but your old co-workers joke website made in the 90s is not going to be ranked high enough to help you out. You can create company profiles on different platforms to increase your authority. Social accounts are the most used by far and is a good place to start. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are generally good.
If you want to know the current state of your site, you can contact us for a website audit!
If you need help setting up any of these items or simply need help with your SEO endeavors, let us know and we will get in touch with you. Here at Lighthouse IT Solutions we have helped companies with no social presence become powerhouses of their industry. (Plus we actually find it fun!)