So Just What Is SEO?

When business owners want their company website to reach the top of local Google search results, they know that increased visibility at the very top of the first page of search results pages (called SERPs for short) will result in more phone calls from potential new customers.

Reaching the Top of Google

Whether these new customers are non-profit organization donors, restaurant customers, take out orders, purchasing items, shopping for clothes, ordering downloads, looking for a service provider, or joining a ad-supported forum; everyone wants to reach the number one spot.

The results in reaching the top of local Google search results are the same: more exposure, more sales, more money coming in.

I Changed My SEO and This Is What Happened

So how does the typical small business owner reach the top of local Google search results?

The Truth About SEO

The answer to that question is that reaching the top of Google, and using SEO to its fullest intent, is actually a combination of factors, that can vary depending on where you live, the size and scope of your business, the resources you have available at hand, your goals, your brand, and other factors such as competition for certain terms and how many other similar businesses there are in an area.

It’s vital that anyone new to SEO understand that as much as business owners want SEO to be a single item that is bought like you would purchase a stack of business cards, it is actually a process that takes time, and a service that requires you to work with a professional if you’re going to reach the place you want to be. We can offer tips and advice and show ways to work with SEO but in many ways collaboration is required if we’re going to seriously make progress.

Can SEO Help My Business

So let’s briefly touch on some of the factors that play into “cracking the SEO code” that will potentially place a business website at the top of Google search results.

Changing the SEO Equation

First, let’s understand what SEO is and why it matters. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the process by which websites get to the top of local search results. Studies have proven conclusively that the closer your business is to the top of Google search results, the more likely it is to be contacted.

Using SEO

SEO involves picking the most appropriate terms and key words that describe a business. Sometimes this can be as simple as listing a city and state where the business resides, followed by the business name itself.

This may sound like an oversimplification, but it’s actually a basic step that most new small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs don’t know to request and that most hobbyist web developers don’t know how to create. And yet it can catapult a website from being invisible in local Google search to the top of the first page within a few days.

What does SEO look like if we could somehow see a bare bones basic visual demonstration of it in practice?

Basic SEO that can send a company website to the top of local search results is easy to find: In the top of every web browser is a tab.

This exists in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Edge, Firefox, or Chrome. If you put your cursor over that tab, you will usually see just a company name.

That tells Google the company associated with the website.

It does not tell Google where the company exists, what it does, what types of goods they sell or what types of services they provide.

So essentially, Google doesn’t know what to do with it. People searching Google will not find that business website unless they enter only a specific company name. And it has to be spelled correctly. And if there are other companies with the same name, it becomes more challenging.

So just bare bones basic SEO would involve listing city, state, and company name in that top tab space, telling Google where you are, and your company name. It’s small but technically can be time-consuming to do, but can make a huge difference in revenue.Listing city, state, and business name is called a meta title. Listing key words is called meta tags.

More Detailed SEO

Now, if we add descriptive key words to that same section, such as “digital marketing,” it tells Google that this website being scanned for indexing is in a particular city, state, has a legitimate legal business name (because it’s immediately cross-referenced with its Google My Business listing and any other directory listings online), and is about that subject matter.

That singular action can literally make the difference between not getting any phone calls from new customers to being deluged with phone calls from new customers. For a retail store, that can mean more customers coming in. For a service provider it can mean more patients, and so on. I’ve seen it transform businesses within days.

Next is content marketing. This involves writing blog posts (like this one) that link to other parts of your website as well as scholarly articles that support a point, or serve to clarify your topic. The more on-target your links match up to your written content, and the more fun and engaging it is to read your posts, the more word will get out.

Now, if your blog posts contain related videos, that’s even better, as studies have show that posts with related videos will rank higher in Google search results. If you include key words in your blog posts, like mentioning SEO and related search engines in a blog post about SEO is a good example.

The more specific we niche down, the better, because there will likely be fewer people writing in-depth articles about that topic. Fewer people blog about the tools electrical engineers use than the latest Marvel movie. Fewer dentists in a small town in Florida will blog about cavity prevention or root canal safety, and so on. You stand out more by doing what others won’t or can’t do and then doing it often. (Which is where “niche marketing” originated).

Content is King

The more content you give Google, and try to make it as engaging as possible, the more Google will pick up your article and promote it. The more passionate your are about your topic, the more organized and thought through the piece is, the longer and more deep it is as a read, the better. So even though we as a society may seem that we are getting further and further away from reading, actually the opposite is true. Google loves content the way a voracious reader loves a heart-wrenching epic drama.

Links to authoritative sources, related articles, professional associations and organizations, related videos that go toward proving your points or clarifying topis, just add more “meat” to be indexed.

Summing Up

Finally, Google has a wealth of tools itself that they offer for free (or mostly free). They can be time-consuming to learn how to use properly but they’re obviously going to be beneficial since they come from the most used search engine on Earth.

Their perspective is going to be both informed and invaluable. Who knows Google better than Google? Nobody, of course, so why not use what they offer and take their advice?

Google offers a service called Google Search Console, that allows you to register your site, its site map (an index of pages and posts), and check it to make sure it works properly on all devices and loads quickly. It also ties into a service called Google Analytics that tracks and reports on results.

GA can tell you who visited your website from what search terms, from what location, how long they looked at your website, how much time they spent on an individual page, and reveal much more digital marketing data that can help business owners “get medieval” on what works and what doesn’t.