With thousands of webpages, videos, and pictures, the internet can seem like a daunting arena for a business owner to wrap their mind around. In our day and age, the vast majority of the marketplace is now occurring online, and with that comes with the importance of promoting a business through the use of keywords on pages that search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing can bring to the top of a user’s search. Proper usage of keywords is a big part of on-page SEO, an abbreviation for search engine optimization. While it sounds complicated, the idea of it is actually quite simple: optimize certain web pages that you want to better promote by inserting useful key phrases. However, sites like Google are constantly changing their online algorithms that decided what pages can make it to the first few pages of their search results. Many full service digital marketing firms specialize in this area and there are many easy tips for a budding business to use it and grow their website to its fullest potential.
Ways to Use SEO
Pop-Up Promotion
One key area of understanding SEO is the idea of tackling pop-up penalties. Pop ups are those annoying ads and click bait videos that bombard your screen with messages like “You won the lottery!” or “Click here to make millions right now!” Although ad blockers are effective in preventing these from showing up on a user’s screen, many small businesses still use them to promote their product. Recently, search engines like Google began punishing businesses that still use pop-ups through mobile phones, as they’re known to cause a negative user experience. As a result, not being careful about using them could lower your search rank and eventually cost you precious income and customers. If you choose to use pop-ups, make sure that they are only showing logins for private content, are easy to close in a window, and ask legal information such as age or permission to use cookies.
Mobile First
Search engines are now paying more attention to whether or not a business’s website is fully optimized for mobile use. If it is not, it could cost your rank to suffer as desktop sites are being used less frequently. In order to ensure that your site is ready for a customer to access on their phone, first quicken your loading time by compressing large graphics, source code, and taking out any redirects that are unnecessary. Make sure to also keep your title and descriptions short and sweet, and utilize HTML5 or Java code so it’s compatible with browsers like Chrome or Safari. Another surefire way is matching your desktop content with your mobile content so that your customer can find the same information from both sources. Finally, always check that your text fits the screen completely so mobile users won’t have to become frustrated from zooming in to read any small text.
HTTPS over HTTP
What do these letters mean and why is it so important? If you take a look at your site’s URL, you’ll notice that you’ll see either one of those two sequences that stand for HyperText Transfer Protocol. However, what you want to always use is HTTPS, as it stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. That “secure” means it protects your information from any online hackers so users are safe from viruses and other malware. If your site doesn’t include it, a user will immediately see a warning that it’s not secure and will most likely exit out immediately. That will surely decrease your online traffic and overall engine rankings, so be careful!
The Payoff of Using SEO
If you’re a business owner who takes pride in putting your best step forward, consider gaining experience in the basics of SEO for it to effectively grow in both rankings and visits in online. It may seem complicated, too technical, or out of reach in the beginning, but after enough time and practice you’ll find that it’s simply helping your customers have the best experience as possible while they visit your website. And the customer comes first right?
If you want to find more ways to use SEO, check out Eminent SEO, a professional digital marketing agency that helps businesses gain more attention online. They’ve helped businesses improve their branding, create breathtaking websites, and give a better perspective on how to market themselves to the public. They also have a free link extractor tool that searches a web page and shows you if you have any broken links. Links are important because your results on search engines will go down if your links aren’t working and secure. Be sure to check your site’s links today and start the process of becoming savvy in SEO!
