ATKA SA | SEO 101

 

SEO can seem like a major challenge to a new marketer. But do not despair – we are here to help! 

 

 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the process of optimizing your website so that it can get good organic rankings and appear on the first page of Google.

 

The big thing to remember with SEO is that it’s all about keywords. Everything can be found on the internet using a keyword, whether it be images; websites; videos; items you’re shopping for or places you want to go – literally everything! 

 

Keyword research is the process of discovering which keywords will work best for the product or service you’re selling. It is probably the most important step in setting your SEO-stage.

 

The SEO process can be divided into two groups – on-site SEO and off-site SEO.

 

On-site SEO:

 

1. Content

The search engines crawl your pages to see how well your content is written, if it is accurate and relevant to your keywords. Make sure the content on your website contains your keywords, but it’s important to still write your content for humans, so don’t stuff your page with keywords.

 

2. HTML

Search engines use Meta titles, Meta descriptions, tags and headers to scan through your content. These tags must contain your specific and relevant keywords, so that the search engine can understand what your landing pages are about.

 

3. Site Architecture

Your website should be structured in such a manner that the spider crawling it can do so easily. Make sure your layout is simple and that your URLs are not too long or complicated and that they contain keywords relevant to the specific landing page. Also ensure that your pages load fast enough as you will be penalized for pages that load too slowly. You can do this by not adding too many images or text in the background.

 

Off-site SEO:

 

1. Link Building

Link building refers to the amount of websites that link back to yours. It’s like votes that proclaim the relevance of the content you are posting. The important thing here is qualitative links – a website like Amazon linking back to your site is more valuable than a link from a small business directory.

 

2. Social Media

If search engines could get married, they’d marry social media platforms. More often than not, websites ranking in the top three positions of Google’s first page are present on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Manage these pages and post at least once a day to gain a social following that can be directed to your website.

 

3. Trust and authority

The older your domain is, the more authoritative it is seen by search engines, because the longer you stick around, the better the chances of your business being successful. The number of times your website is shared and the amount of back-links to your website are, is also considered as important by the spiders.

 

 

Now that you know enough about SEO to get started, test these tips and watch how your ranking improves and your website is visited more and more!