If you are a small business just setting up your website, you may feel a bit overwhelmed by everything you need to do to make your site visible and ensure good rankings with search engines. With so much information available online, how can you make sure people who are interested in what you have to offer actually find your site?
The answer lies in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is content designed to help search engines find your websites when a potential visitor types in their search query.
So how important is SEO to your website?
To put it bluntly, it’s everything.
If you need help optimizing your site, the best course of action is to hire a company whose primary focus is SEO – one that exists to help small businesses get noticed in a sea of other similar business websites.
Recent changes in Google’s ranking protocols have made it more difficult for business owners to maintain their SEO content on their own. Because Google is constantly evolving (and influencing the ways in which other search engines rank sites) there has been an increase in need for savvy SEO services along virtually all online marketing platforms.
If you are considering doing your own SEO content there are a few things you need to consider:
Google notices content: The days of selling and trading links between sites that are unrelated are over. While doing so may increase traffic short-term, Google’s spiders will figure out what you’ve done eventually. In a best case scenario, your rankings could plummet. In severe cases, your site could be banned from search engine results outright.
While keywords are the most common SEO element, having relevant websites linking back to your site can be at least as effective an SEO strategy as using keywords. If Google can see numerous sites linking back to your page, your page will rank higher. The stipulation is that the sites linking back to you MUST be related to your content. A website dedicated Vegan lifestyle linking back to a butcher shop’s website will to throw up red flags for Google so keep it relevant. Not all links are created equal.
Don’t Over-Do Keyword density: Most search engines limit the percentage of key words and key word phrases they consider acceptable on a page without considering it “stuffed.” A good rule of thumb is to try keeping keywords and phrases in your content to about 1-1.5 percent. Websites or pages that use a specific word or phrase too often run the risk of being marked as spam and could become blocked from search results.
Don’t think you can beat the system: Some sites still try hiding keywords by adding invisible text making it invisible to the reader but visible to the search engines. This is known as a Black Hat Tactic and it can get your site banned.
Avoid Duplicate content: Some sites create multiple pages with identical or nearly identical content with the intent of getting both pages to rank high on the search engines. This may work initially, but Google’s search bots are able to analyze the content and may block all the pages that it determines to be the same.
As a small business owner or entrepreneur, you owe it to yourself to at least investigate SEO services to help you maintain quality content. A good SEO service can get your website higher rankings without complications or costly errors.
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