A Young Entrepreneurs’ Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
By Lucy Long
Would you classify your website as an “underdog”? Showing up as the 400th result in a search query generating no traffic. Thinking, “Wow, why is no one finding my awesome content?!”
You’re in luck! You can overcome this frustration with a tactic known as Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is a set of strategies used to drive traffic to a website and increase the awareness of the brand. These processes are used by companies when competing to be at the top of the organic results in a search engine. Throughout this article, you’ll learn some of the high-level insights and vernacular used to better understand the process.
Organic results are non-paid advertising- they rely on a ranking algorithm based on what the search assumes is valuable. How do we become a natural result that viewers see?
Through SEO, we try to become the top organic result on the SERP:
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The SERP includes what are known as “SERP Features” such as a people also ask box, top stories from the news, and image packs. Once covering up the SERP features, viewers see the organic results. This is may seem a bit like techno-babble jargon, however it’s an important term to know when understanding how and why you are implementing your SEO strategies.
How Do You Show Up On The SERP?
To qualify to appear on a SERP, you page needs to be crawled and indexed. The search engine finds your page by “crawling”, then the crawlers store the information from the different pages on your site in a storage center. This storage center is known as the index.
Simply put, imagine that the index is the dresser in your bedroom. You have shorts in one drawer, socks in another, and T-shirts in another drawer. When you look for clothes, you know exactly where they are because you organized it that way.
If you did not organize or never saw a particular clothing item, you would not be able to find it... or even know that you should be looking for it in the first place.
SEO Key Steps
Now that you have a vague understanding of some key concepts, how do we actually implement it?
Research is the key to developing an SEO strategy. In this initial phase, you’ll need to define goals, identify keywords, and analyze the competition. It is critical to understand your competition because you’ll want to know what keywords competitors are already fighting for versus key phrases you can rank for faster. How do we develop keywords that will generate traffic against a big name brand or other small companies? We’ll get to that soon.
Next, we need to audit the website. The audit includes checking your site for any issues. In an audit, it is essential to check accessibility, content, and indexation. Major problems to look for in the examination include:
Make sure your page has been indexed. As mentioned earlier, if your page has not been crawled, then the search engine cannot find you.
Check your website load time. Slow websites hurt your rankings. If you are experiencing slow load times, the main culprit is typically the image sizes on the page. The image load time affects the page load time- humans are impatient and won't wait very long. There are speed test tools that help you evaluate this, however, you should aim for .5-2 seconds for your page to load. If your page is taking longer, make sure your image is at most 200KB and keep them relevant.
Target appropriate keyword phrases. Make sure your keywords are right for your company. A small boutique selling clothing will not be able to top name brands for keywords "cute shirts” or “men’s pants". Instead, try to be more specific with your keywords like “fun summer tops” or “best khakis for golfing”.
the content on your site is key to generating traffic. SEO is used to help your website generate traffic, awareness, and ultimately revenue, but there is some finesse in how you structure things on your site to accomplish your goals. Often amateurs attempt to start at this step, but to fully understand SEO and succeed, you first need to first research and audit.
How To Optimize A Page
A key to optimizing a page to generate traffic is to identify keywords. There are many Saas tools out there (Moz, Ahrefs, SEMRush) that will all let you access this information for a monthly subscription, however you can also use Google Keyword Planner for broader insights that won’t cost you anything. A few considerations when using the tool for research:
Identify a broad topic: What are you promoting? What is the page about? What questions might someone ask when searching for this type of content?
Develop lists: Write down the multiple variants of ways to search for the page and find ways to write each variation on different pages throughout your website. The more variations, the more likely you are to match someone’s search criteria, particularly if it’s a fairly niche market like “learning leathercraft” or “dfw private investigator”.
Isolate: Figure out the phrases you are most likely to rank for and use them multiple times throughout your site.
There are a lot of opportunities out there to learn more or leverage tools. For instance, Answer the Public is a site that helps you identify multiple keyword variants. The site groups them in categories of "who?" and "what?" types of questions. Google Trends is also a free site that can help you generate lists.
Make Friends Through Link Building and Sharing
Now that we have optimized our page, we need to get social. Link building is a strategy to help spread your page. Emailing newsletters and having followers share your content on social media are great ways to generate traffic, but don’t always do much to support your rankings on their own.
Link building is the process of having other websites include a hyperlink to your own. This helps teach Google that your page is important, what it’s about, and generates more traffic and helps you rank higher in the SERP. The link building process helps build relationships with other sources, attain referral traffic, and build your brand.
One of the key ranking factors for Google’s algorithms is how many other sites link to your page, so guest blogging, public relations for online news mentions, sponsorships, or partnerships are all part of a holistic SEO strategy.
With SEO, you can help your website gain a better ranking in the SERP and generate more traffic. SEO is like a puzzle; you need to evaluate the best way to delegate your time to obtain the right combination of keywords and load speed and traffic and find the right backlinks that fit for your website. It’s not always easy, and can some times take six months to a year for newer sites to see the impact, but SEO is an important consideration for your overall strategy.
Author byline:
Lucy Long is a Strategic Communications major and Data Analytics minor at Texas Christian University.