4 Things You Didn’t Know About SEO

There is a lot to learn about search engine optimization. SEO is as complicated as it is effective, and there are a lot of myths and informational gaps surrounding the topic. Here are four things most people don’t understand about SEO best practices in 2016.

1. You’re a small fish in a big pond. You need to choose your keywords wisely. Let’s face it, if you are a small men’s fashion start-up company, you are not going to rank at the top of the search engine results page for the phrase “mens shoes.”Google “mens shoes” and see which companies are at the top of the organic results. Spoiler: it’s DSW, Zappos, and Nordstrom. You don’t have the SEO firepower to knock any of these big-name brands out of the top three. And guess what? A whole 60% of all clicks go to the organic top three search results.In other words, don’t waste your time on these kinds of keywords. Instead, focus on alternate phrases or more specific descriptions. If you specialize in a certain kind of shoe, try working with that as your keyword. You can also work on optimizing your own brand name.

   Remember: some SEO companies will be happy to take your money for those high-value keywords, even though they know that SEO campaign is doomed to fail.

1. You are trying to rank the pages within your site. You are not trying to rank your entire site. Rather, it is the pages within your site that will be ranked. Your site is broken up into many segments, including a homepage, an About page, a Contact page, and a whole number of other pieces. You should focus your SEO campaign on optimizing pages that will attract potential customers. Your homepage might be one of them, but the more focused your SEO campaign is on individual pages, the more successful it will be.

1. Quality content is essential. SEO is not about keywords, but about how you use those keywords. Content creation should revolve around attention-grabbing headlines and quality writing so that you can establish yourself as an authority in your field. When you have good content, other sites will link to yours, drawing more traffic to your site and letting Google know that you are a reputable source of information. Research shows that effective content marketing can lead to an estimated 40% increase in revenue.

1. SEO can and should be used to target specific geographical locations. If your company serves markets outside the U.S., you can optimize your website to reach an international audience. By doing this, you can rank higher in different countries. One way to do this is to offer a country-specific domain.Just as you can make your site rank higher in different countries, you can also use search engine optimization to target each city where you offer services. Local SEO is becoming more and more important. In fact, according to Google’s search data, interest in the search phrase “near me” has increased 34 times since 2011 and doubled between 2014 and 2015.

After reading this list, hopefully you are better prepared to tackle your next SEO campaign. Feel free to add some more advice or contact us with any specific questions.