A beginner’s guide to understanding search engine optimization
So, SEO principles are all the rave right now. If you’ve ever owned or operated a business, a blog or any kind of social platform within these last few years, you’ve probably heard about them. We’ve got SEO courses and specialists who charge a pretty penny to “incorporate” SEO into your website and brand. So, what is SEO anyway, and how can you as a layman, business owner, blogger, (or just anyone curious about social and IT trends) use it to your advantage? If you’ve ever wondered about either of these questions, you’re in luck! Allow me to elaborate as succinctly as possible.
Simply put, SEO (Search engine optimization) is a combination of tricks and tactics you can incorporate into your website, blog or business, to grow your traffic and visitors organically.
Let’s dive in and briefly explore some of these tricks!
1. Keywords
This is probably the most important trick to maximize your web traffic. Integrating words and phrases that are frequently searched for on popular search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex, will consequently increase your visibility and number of visitors. Of course, this isn’t the only step necessary for SEO
optimization, however, incorporating relevant keywords into your blogs and web pages will definitely get more visitors to your site.
So what do you need to do? Find out what people are searching for (in relation to your specialty) and incorporate these words and phrases into your web pages.
2. Page speed
3. SSL, aka secure sockets layer, aka that little padlock icon at the top of “secure” websites
Again, a website without a “padlock” looks shady to a lot of people; even Google thinks it’s shady. No padlock = no encryption = low data security. You get the point. : D Nobody wants their private info leaked or stolen. “Shady” websites are less likely to get recommended or show up in search engines, and that equals less traffic.
Getting your website “secure” is pretty easy, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem. Solution? Have your website secured to up your traffic.
4. Relevant tags, sitemaps and backlinks
Relevant tags (like keywords) will help your web pages rank higher in search engines. Sitemaps are generated by special plugins or codes. They can be integrated into your website or blog to optimize the readability of your website by search engines (this is known as crawling). Backlinks, simply put are links
attached to texts. This can redirect visitors to view more content on your website, thus increasing visitor retention.
So, What’s the short version of all these jargons?
- Use keywords, i.e words that people frequently search for;
- Optimize your web-speed to retain more visitors and to provide an overall pleasant user experience;
- Get the “padlock”, lol; no, seriously, get your website secured;
- Use relevant tags and plugins to further optimize your SEO.
And that’s it! Pretty easy, right? : ) The overall goal is to give the users something relevant. Strive to create a wonderful user experience, as much as you can. Cos, even if you get all the traffic in the world, and rank number one on search engines, you still need content to retain visitors and minimize your bounce rate. Makes sense? : )
Also, if all these sound too complex to DIY, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered at Ribofix. Shoot us a dm or email, and let’s get begin optimizing your website!
