Your business website needs content, so you've shared stories about product launches, helpful tips for your readers and engaging staff bios complete with professional photos. Then, silence. The website traffic is stagnant despite updating the blog each week like your colleagues told you to do. What's going on?
Chances are your content simply isn't getting indexed by search engines, which means your customers aren't finding your hard work either. Luckily, you can change that by implementing SEO, or search engine optimization.
What Is SEO?
As you take a more strategic approach to your content creation and marketing efforts, you'll hear the term SEO tossed around. But what is SEO? At its essence, search engine optimization is the process of bringing traffic to your website from free, organic search results generated by search engines such as Google, Yahoo! or Bing, according to Search Engine Land.
Hosting Facts reported that in 2017, over 2 million blog posts were published each day. Add to that the daily 5.5 billion Google searches and that's a lot of content for potential readers to sift through. Search engines bring the "best" posts to the top of their search engine results pages (SERPs) thanks to some carefully coded algorithms.
One factor in the placement of a webpage in the SERPs is whether or not the text was optimized for search engines. Implementing SEO is like adding a life jacket to your website content. It helps the content be seen and rise to the top among pages of similar content from your competitors. When it comes to optimizing content, keywords play a critical role.
What Are Keywords?
Marketers spend ample time researching keywords that actually interest internet users so that the content they create doesn't drown in the sea of new posts published each day. Google is one company that offers keyword volume and analytics tools inside their AdWords product to assist in this process.
Keywords can be individual words or a short phrase. When keywords are used in your website content, search engines take note and give it priority over content that isn't optimized. When choosing keywords to work with, be sure the reasons they're popular relate to your topic, or you'll draw an irrelevant crowd.
For example, if your business sells billiards tables to pool halls, you might be delighted to discover a high demand for the keywords "pool accessories" and "pool supplies." However, you might accidentally find that your website visitors expect to learn more about swimming pool products. Oops! Finding the perfect keywords to optimize your content takes a little finesse and research, but once you discover which words relate to your customers, your blog posts and website pages will be found.
Do you need help learning the best keywords for your products and services? Reach out to a marketing professional who can help you develop a strategy that won't let your website copy go unnoticed.
