Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Queries when someone is looking for a specific site but they don’t know the URL. Branded searches like “rick’s automotive” or “hurts donuts” show the intent to find the website for these local businesses. Another example would be searching “gmail” if you wanted to login to your Gmail account.

Queries when the user is looking for a specific answer. An example would be “population springfield mo.” The person using that search query is specifically looking for the one piece of information that will answer often answer a question. This phenomenon is why knowing movie trivia isn’t much of a party trick anymore. Anyone at the party can look up the “cast of The Shinning” when no one can remember Jack Nicholson’s name.

Queries when a user has intent to make a purchase. This can be a search for an exact item like “2008 ford escape” or the search can be general like “auto body shop.” Transactional searches are something we could spend a lot of time talking about, but having a surface definition is sufficient for now.

This is the part of SEO that makes the most sense, and you actually have complete control. On-page SEO has to do with the literal words on the webpage and how they relate to the keyword phrases for which you are trying to rank. This includes both the content that is visible to a user and meta data like title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags, and more.

Search engines are much smarter than they used to be. In the past web designers would put the same keyword they wanted to rank for as many times as they could throughout the page. This comes across as spammy and is not good for users, so Google learned to spot this behavior and penalize websites that had that kind of content.

The best practice is to write your content as you normally would and make sure you have your keyword in a few main spots. These spots include your URL, title tag, meta description, h1 tag, the body of your content, and the alt tags of images when applicable.

There is more to on-page SEO than just using the keyword you want to rank for in your content. Technical elements of your website like site structure and page load speed all affect on-page SEO as well, but those ideas are more complex.

Search engines care about an idea called authority. The more authority a site has, the more likely it is to rank for a keyword especially if lots of other site are also trying to rank for that keyword. There are a few easy ways to gain authority.

• Time – Search engines tend to like domains who have been around longer and have an established history of putting out content. If you just started your business, be patient, Google won’t rank you number one right away. The other piece that time plays is that search engines tend to like newer content because users tend to like newer content. If you haven’t updated your content in the last 6 months to a year, it may be time for a refresh.
• Links – Links from other sites help search engines know that your content is worthwhile. All links are not created equal though and it’s important to never buy links (this is an old spammy technique that will cause you a headache in the long run). Instead you want to earn links from other authoritative site, especially ones that have content in the same niche as your site.
• Mentions – Are people talking about your website on social media? Do the social media accounts tied to your site get good levels of interaction? Are you being mentioned in blogs and other places around the web (even without your site being linked back to)? These things will all affect your rankings in search.

This is a simple look at off-page SEO, but you can start to get an idea of how complex of a puzzle SEO can be.

How users interact with your website will affect where a search engine will rank your website.

One factor is click-through-rate (CTR) which is how often a user clicks on your site when they see it on a search engine result page. If users are clicking through to your website more than the website that is ranking above you for a keyword phrase, then search engines see that as a reason to rank your website higher in the future.

Another factor is time on page and bounce rate. These metrics measure how engaging your content is to users. If users spend a long time on your page, search engines assume that the content on the page is valuable. Bounce rate is when a user leaves after only viewing one page. This is not always a bad thing, sometimes a user can find all the information they are looking for on one page. It’s still a good idea to try to encourage users to go to multiple pages by linking to other relevant pieces of information from your site.

The more engaging your site is to users, the better you will rank in search results.

There is a newer concept that Google is getting better at measuring and this is the idea of “task completion.” A user doesn’t need to stay on a page long if they are just trying to find your phone number. If your website helps a searcher complete their goal, then you are more likely to rank higher. This concept is broad, but reminds us that we should be making content to give users the best experience possible.