The Secret to SEO

I think we've all been there... we start our business, get a great website, and wait for the people to come knocking on our door (okay, more like emails to come pouring in) right? If this isn't happening for you, you may want to take a look at your SEO.

Search Engine Optimization can be scary and overwhelming. In today's post I'll break it down and simplify SEO into simple steps you can take on your own.

Fist of all, what is Search Engine Optimization? It's the process of maximizing the number of visitors to your website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.

Let's break it down.

Use keywords
Keywords are words that your audience will be searching for in search engines. To come up with keywords it may be helpful for you to start a list or spreadsheet with words or phrases common to your industry and business. Once you have a good list, use those keywords in the most important parts of a page. This is known as on-page SEO - optimizing specific parts of your website is key to boosting your page rankings.

Some places you can focus on are page titles, meta descriptions, URLs or your Slug, alt text, and text to links to pages within your site.

Your meta description is the first few lines of text that shows up in the search engine results. 

Your URL or Slug is what the actual link to your page will look like. For example, this blog post will be under www.ignitemybizz.com/blog/the-secret-to-seo.

Alt text is the text that is tied to an image and explains what the image is. Search engines use this text as well when pulling search results. If you are using a website editor or hosting site, many times you will be able to tweak this information by clicking the image when in the back end or editing portion of your site. Not only is this another way to increase your SEO, you can help people who may be visually impaired and are using screen readers to understand the contents of the page by describing your site through keywords.

Schedule Social Media Posts
Posting on social media regularly will also help your web presence. Automating or scheduling social media posts can make your life a lot easier by allowing you to batch your work and frequently post when your audience is watching. This way you continue to be on your followers' radar and keep engagement up. 

Create Custom, Shareable Images
Great images and content make your inbound marketing content worthy of shares and engagement. This will increase your follower numbers, social media engagement, and the amount of external links to your site. The more people share your website or posts, the more external links you will have. 

Canva is a great way to get started. This free software makes it easy for even the least experienced person to create great graphics and takes the guess work out of finding the right image size.

Use an SEO Analytics Platform to Monitor Performance
Google Analytics will break down the information into categories like Audience, Acquisition, and Behavior to help you understand the amount of traffic you have and where it's coming from.

Takeaway
With all this information, I hope your biggest take away is to just show up. Be sure you are using all of your platforms like your social media pages, website, guest blogging, or wherever it makes sense for you to show that your content is the best for the solutions your audience is looking for. The key to getting more traffic lies in integrating content with search engine optimization and social media marketing.