If you have a business, you have to be online. And if anyone is to notice your presence online, then you have to engage in search engine optimization (SEO). SEO starts by finding keywords that people use in order to find your particular product or service, and the effectiveness of this will determine how well your page ranks on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The higher your SERP, the more relevant your website, the easier it is to find you on Google. Usually, you do this by including content on your website that is fresh, relevant, interesting, and filled with the right keywords in the right place, and the right amount.
Organic SEO
Organic SEO is the most important type of SEO. For something to be classed as organic, you have to follow the criteria as they have been set by the individual search engines. Naturally, Google is the most important one and it is likely that you will follow their criteria.
They have listed a number of factors that determine what your ranking could be, and then use a highly complex algorithm to determine where on their search engine you should list for each individual search term that someone may use.
To make things more complicated, the algorithm changes quite regularly, to keep website owners on their toes and to make results more relevant.
Because there is so much traffic to be gained by achieving a top position on Google, the exact details of the algorithm are a very closely guarded secret, and there is no way you will find it out.
However, although you may not know the formula, you do know what type of behavior is expected of you, such as being mobile optimized, locally optimized, having inbound and outbound and internal links, and having well placed, relevant keywords.
Related: An Ultimate Guide For Picking An SEO Expert
Keywords
Keywords are the key to everything. Without keywords, you won’t get traffic either. This is why your entire SEO campaign will be centered around them. The rule of thumb is quite easy to understand: content is king. So, if you get the content of your website right, informative, and accurate, you will also get higher rankings.
This is why an optimization campaign will start with a keyword research exercise. You have to find which terms that are relevant to you and that will generate traffic, but you also have to think about whether or not your customers will regularly use those keywords.
There are a lot of ways to perform this type of research, although it is often best left to the professional. If you do insist on doing things yourself, then make sure you use a high quality keyword selector tool.
The best keyword selector tool has always been Overture. Unfortunately, in 2007, they ceased to exist. While their historical data is still available, and interesting, it is now no longer relevant. Hence, you have to use other tools that are available to you in order to find out what people are looking for.