Learning SEO

Ever wonder how Google just knows exactly what websites to pull up?

How when you type in “skinny jeans for men” Nordstrom and Levi’s sites pull up right by the top?

That is thanks to SEO. But, what is it?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which Moz describes as “SEO is a set of practices designed to improve the appearance, positioning, and usefulness of multiple types of content in the organic search results. This content can include web pages, video media, images, local business listings, and other assets.”

Because most people are finding their information via search engines like Google, it is essential now for websites to utilize SEO to the fullest so that potential viewers can find your site.

It is in many ways the most important aspect of getting an online presence. Especially as an e-commerce business.

Let’s show what I am talking about.

What if we want to learn more about the national parks in Montana? As soon as the question is tossed to Google, we instantly have relevant information and a site where we can learn more.

Here, Google is able to pull all our information into a featured snippet, essentially pulling info from other sites and presenting right at the top of the page. When sites give Google all this info into what the page they own is about, what is serves and what it links to, it help Google know when to present it to potential viewers.

It can go even beyond this as well giving you image results to best show what something looks like.

Or showing video results when you need a how-to video.

Now that we know what SEO is, how do we best optimize that for our own sites. Moz gives us a list of both on and off page SEO items that sites can update to achieve better SEO performance.

On-page SEO

• Domain names

• Page URLs

• Page titles

• Headers

• Alt text

• Images

• Videos

• Navigational

• Meta description tags

• Internal links

• Sitemaps

• The main body text of each page

Off-page SEO

• Earning links and citations from high quality third-party sites via the merit of your content

• Managing link disavowal

• Proactively building links and citations from high quality third-party sites via outreach to those publications

• Engaging in a variety of forms of online promotion, including social media marketing, being featured as a guest on third-party blogs, podcasts, and vlogs

• Traditional PR, including writing press releases and building relationships with influencers

• For local businesses, creating local business profiles and building local unstructured citations

By trying to make sure that all of your information is properly updated, across all channels, your site has a much greater chance of appearing higher on Search Engine result pages.

However, SEO is not the golden egg, it only works in conjunction with other PR, advertising, and more. By showing activity on your site, you have a far better chance of competing for a top spot.