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You’ve established your startup and its website, and are doing well. You’re getting the impression that you could further your exposure, yet you’re not sure how. Where do you begin? You might have seen the term ‘search engine optimization’ on your travels through business blogs, yet you’re unsure of what it even is and how to best incorporate it onto your website.
The truth is, practically and intelligently applied, SEO is one of the best methods to increase your exposure, by form fitting your website in the correct and preferential ways search engines like Google use to organically rank their search results.
Clearly defined, search engine optimization is the activity of improving a website to the point where the page takes a higher listing in the numbered order of search engine terms. Intelligently administered, your website could possibly be drawn to an audience that’s larger than you initially intended. It’ll take a little bit of foresight, smart application, and wise execution, but follow this article and there’s no reason you can’t apply and utilize SEO in your business alongside the best of them.
The best way to incorporate SEO is to run a blog of content rich articles, that genuinely help your targeted demographic but can also promote your service naturally. Think of this like advertising that actually gives more than it demands. It’s a natural, healthy way to conduct business because correctly informing your potential clients about a range of topics is a happy way to conduct brand familiarity with the client. Above all, make sure that your business uses accurate, researched content. This will increase the public and professional image of your brand.
However, there are positive and negative ways you can influence your SEO ranking. The following tips will help you enhance your strengths and mitigate your negatives.
Positives
Age
Google takes special consideration of the ‘indexed age’ of your website. That doesn’t mean the date your articles or content is created, but the date that Google ‘discovers’ the content. New content isn’t necessarily preferred. Make sure that your domain is registered with Google search terms and you’ll have a better time getting onto their search rankings list. Building a wealth of informative, correct content over time will increase the preferential treatment your articles you get, no matter the age.
Authority
In order to make your website worth linking to and thus increasing the ‘authority’ factor of your SEO result, you need to actually produce content that other non-competing customers would be happy to link to. In-depth, well-written and researched articles are going to help you here, so be sure you have an expert at the helm writing, or outsource your content to a professional writer. The content should flow naturally, be free from spelling errors and have a good grip of well-formed syntax. You should be aiming to be ‘the’ blog for your intended field.
Content
As listed before, the content should be accurate and well-written. It should also be keyword rich depending on the field you’re writing for. ‘Thin’ content, that is content written with a word count in mind as opposed the actual production of a good, informative piece will negatively affect your ranking, and also turn off prospective clients visiting the page. It’s simply good form to do the best you can here.
International Hosting
Your hosting location might either impede or allow your content to be seen by people worldwide. You might ask the question of international web hosting issues: does location really matter? The answer is yes. If your IP address is registered to a certain location, Google preferentially treats your content in that area because they believe it will be more appropriate for that geographical audience.
Luckily, if you’re looking to advertise your products in a different country, you can change the geolocation of your web server to be correctly included in the search terms of those in other countries. Be sure to keep this in mind when incorporating SEO, because you absolutely don’t want your well-developed content to be seen in your entirely wrong demographic, or a demographic that isn’t ideal.
Negatives
Missing Correct Links
As part of your SEO strategy, linking to other websites will help you show a diversified interest in sourcing the structure of your content. However, missing links, or HTML’s that aren’t correctly pasted onto anchor texts will make your website look sloppy, and Google will punish your website for it in the search rankings. Google are concerned with informative, accurate, but ultimately correctly formatted content. Always double check the content you’re submitting on your website for inaccuracies. They may just render the effort you’ve made in your articles useless.
Too Many Keywords
Keywords are preferred in Google’s ranking terms, but using too many of them in a clunky way will betray an unintelligent attempt to spam them for higher exposure. Google will also punish you for this. You need to make sure that your articles are filled with appropriate keywords. Keywords that make sense within the body of the article. For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about fitness, and the differing benefits of dumbbell and barbell training. You’re intending to sell your fitness supplements on the store of your website. Filling the body of the content with keywords such as ‘muscle, gym, abs, strength,’ when they’re not actually contributing to the benefit of the article will show your SEO strategy for what it is. Being smart and subtle is best practice here.
In summary, the best-applied search engine optimization will not only allow you to rank high in a search engine’s rankings, but it will afford you the opportunity to keep a growing library of informative content on your website. This will benefit both client and business because the spread of good, useful information is always a net positive. It falls to you to inform your staff about SEO, and how and why you’re going to incorporate it into your business. Outsource if necessary.
If you grapple with this correctly, you might be surprised to see your sales doing even better than before. Be sure not to abuse the SEO system, provide a positive online presence with the information you submit, and you’ll be certain to reap the rewards.
