Rules Are Rules: Understanding the Importance of SEO
It seems that the most technical side of digital marketing lies in the things of which users are unaware. Link building and search engine optimization are the ways in which users can find your company and put your website to good use. These things, along with UX, are the support system of every other marketing medium.
Keep It Clean
Hyperlink building is crucial, as it is the way in which users navigate between pages on the internet. It’s important for companies to have inbound links from external sites. The start of the link tag, link referral location, visible anchor, and closure of link tag are all strategically created in order to give the most logical experience possible.
Businesses benefit from having proper links because they are able to increase their outreach and connections with businesses who can make their sites more visible. Good links can also promote more complex branding and aid in the credibility of your business. Furthermore, link building campaigns are implemented when there is a goal, such as raising the number of conversions on a site. Those working on the campaign actively try to increase the number of links that lead to your website, whether these be influences or small companies. More strangers will find your website if there are more sources that are putting your content out into the world and giving it to their viewers.
Keep It Original
Search engine optimization aims to increase the visibility that businesses have when users complete organic searches. These organic searches fall other three different query-types, including Transactions, Information, and Navigation. Search Engine Optimizers must do some groundwork in order for search engines to discover business' relevant web pages.
Search engines are tasked with, both, building an index of sites for the user and giving users a ranked list of websites that are relevant for what they’re searching. Searching through possible results and arranging them into a list, or "crawling", must be done as fast as possible, within fractions of a second. Search engines interpret popular websites as more valuable, so it is important to drive as much traffic to your site as possible.
To get your site to the top of results lists, Google and Bing both advise businesses to do a list of simple things:
- Give text links a clear hierarchy
- Give pages titles and add descriptions to make attributes searchable
- Use keywords and URLs that people can understand
- Ensure media isn’t buried in complicated programs or login pages
- Match content and keywords for what users are searching
With Search Engine Optimization, there are a set of guidelines to follow, and a blacklist of actions to avoid. The positive actions, or "White-hat strategies", all encourage being an original, creative source who wants to promote personalized business to people. This method of doing business is the best route to take because, although it requires more effort and fewer guarantees, they are more sustainable. To keep your business afloat for a long time, you must have ethical practices and create content and SEO that is going to set you apart from the rest.
The commonly broken rules, or "Black-hat strategies", are ways in which businesses can get a better ranking on Google, but break the rules when it comes to portraying the company’s actual content. These practices are risky because search engines are scouring through search results and looking for pages that have violated ethical practices. If you’re caught with an unethical page, it is likely you will lose your ranking. Since quality and status are so important to a business’s online presence, it is detrimental to lose positive history.
The Bottom Line...
Writing for SEO in 2018 is much different than it was decades ago. now than it did a long time ago. People are searching more now for solutions to their “problems”, so if your writing doesn’t accomplish that, your ranking won’t be satisfactory. You won’t rank very well, and you won’t rank for very long. Contrary to years past, now SEOs should create one page to serve the multiple intents that searchers might have. Instead of stuffing web pages with keywords and multiple variances on the same target sites can encapsulate all of it into one page.
Additionally, the backbone of all writing for SEO is moderated by elements of UX. Because there is so much accessibility and speed in the world today, poor functionality will drive users away from sites. If people become too frustrated with a site’s functionality, they have the option to head back to the results page and try something new. SEO and UX work together by helping people find the content, SEO, and keeping them there, UX.