What is Search Engine Optimization?

Over the years, search engine optimization has been described in many different ways. But at its core, SEO is simply a way to help your website show up near the top of Google and Bing for relevant searches. While there are individuals and companies that engage in SEO practices specifically prohibited by Google, the type of search engine optimization Web Strategy Plus does for all of its clients is in full compliance with Google’s guidelines.

To get a better understanding of what exactly goes into search engine optimization, we want to highlight several of the key building blocks of this practice:

1. Strategy

Successful search engine optimization requires an investment of time and resources. That’s why it’s very important to start with a well-developed strategy. By thinking through issues like which keywords are going to bring in actual leads or customers, you can ensure that the investments you make in SEO will help move the needle for your investment.

2. On-Page Optimization

Since your business website is the foundation of all SEO efforts, it’s important to have it fully optimized. In addition to things like using the right keywords in your H1 tags, you also need to address any technical issues. Specifically, Google has placed a lot of emphasis on page speed and mobile friendliness in recent years. Having a site that’s slow or doesn’t load easily on devices with smaller screens will hamper all of your SEO efforts.

3. Content

Related to on-page optimization, regularly publishing quality content is essential for helping to rank for all the keywords that are relevant to your business. The type of content you publish will likely be a mixture of blog posts and landing pages. Utilizing SEO strategies like internal linking will help maximize the rankings of these pages.

4. Links

Google still relies on links from other websites to determine popularity. However, link building can easily go wrong when people do things like focusing on quantity instead of quality. And it’s also important to understand that the optimal approach to link building for a local business website will differ from a site that’s trying to rank for more generic terms.

5. Data

Ranking data is important for seeing how a website is advancing on target search engine results pages. But it’s also important to go beyond that and look at analytics data like average page views. Seeing this information will help confirm if the pages that are ranking highly are actually providing visitors with what they’re searching for.

There’s a lot that goes into developing and executing a successful SEO strategy. If you want to ensure that you have a knowledgeable professional on your side to help with all of this work, you can easily learn more about how Web Strategy Plus approaches search engine optimization services.

This is the syndicated copy of an original article posted at https://www.webstrategyplus.com/search-engine-optimization/

How to Approach SEO in 2018

Search engine optimization remains one of the best ways for businesses to bring highly targeted visitors to their website. While the ROI on search engine optimization can be very appealing, SEO does require a lot of work. Not only is there an upfront investment that needs to be made to lay the foundation for SEO success, but the always evolving nature of search engine optimization means that ongoing work is a must.

If you want to increase the number of visitors who come to your site from Google, here are four ways to work towards this goal in 2018:

1. Speed Up Your Site

The amount of emphasis Google puts on page speed has continued to increase over the last few years. We're at the point where it's extremely difficult for a slow website to rank well in Google. If you have concerns that the amount of time it takes your site to load is hurting your rankings, working with website development in Ohio professionals can get your site running faster.

2. Build the Right Type of Links

Google has made it clear that link quality is much more important than quantity. So even though services that promise hundreds of links may sound appealing at first, those links are much more likely to hurt your rankings instead of helping them. Focusing on link building opportunities like outreach and press mentions will do much more for your rankings over the long-term.

3. Optimize for Mobile

Like page speed, Google has made mobile one of the most important elements in their ranking algorithm. With many sites receiving more than half of all their traffic from mobile devices, using techniques like responsive design to create a seamless experience on mobile is just as important for your overall online efforts as it is for SEO. If you're unhappy with your site's current mobile performance, web design in Cincinnati by Web Strategy Plus can help.

4. Update Old Content

Does your site have a blog that's been regularly updated over the last few years? If so, your site has a lot of valuable content. While some of those posts are probably bringing in a significant amount of traffic, others may not be performing as well as they should. By looking through your analytics, you'll be able to identify posts that are good candidates for updating. Taking the time to perform tasks like keyword optimization and adding extra information to those posts may be all that's needed to move them to the top of Google.

If you want to make 2018 the best year for your business in Google, be sure to take a look at our search engine optimization services and website redesign services.

Getting Visitors to Your Local Business Website

It’s important for a local business website to look great and load quickly. It’s also important for this type of site to be filled with quality content that will hold visitors’ attention. However, none of those factors are going to matter much if a site is the equivalent of an online ghost town. Given how much competition there is among local and all other businesses online, it’s no longer enough to simply have a great website. Instead, businesses need to have a clear strategy for driving visitors to their website. Since this is something businesses across a wide range of industries struggle with, we want to share some advice on what actually works for getting visitors to your local business website in 2017:

1. Tag Optimization

If you’ve done any research into search engine optimization services, you may have read that meta tags are no longer important. While there’s some truth to that statement, it actually overlooks something quite significant. Although Google doesn’t use the meta keyword tag in its ranking, both the title and description tags are used to determine what’s displayed when a business website shows up in search results. So being strategic about what you write in both of these tags can have an impact on your site’s ranking, as well as getting searchers to click your result instead of any others on the page.

2. Quality Citations

Citations are the term used to refer to links from directories. You’ll want to ensure you have citations from large directories like Yelp, as well as smaller directories that specialize in your industry. The citations you’ll want to claim and optimize include Google My Business, which is the current system that Google uses for the data it shows in the three-pack of results at the top of many local search pages. It’s also important for all of your citations to be correct and consistent across directories.

3. Online Reviews

Not only are online reviews another factor that Google takes into account, but what’s written about your business across the Internet can either drive meaningful amounts of visitors or prevent people from even considering your business. There are a variety of different ways to increase the number of online reviews your business gets without breaking any guidelines. You can also use the reviews you receive to enhance initiatives like landing pages and ultimately improve the effectiveness of things like PPC advertising services.

While implementing any or all of what we covered above will benefit your business, completing these tasks in-house can be a challenge. If you want to work with experienced providers of local SEO services who have a track record of success, the Web Strategy Plus team can help craft and implement a strategy that’s tailored to the specific needs of your business.

The Best SEO Techniques for 2017

One of the reasons that search engine optimization is so challenging is it's a field that's always changing. In many cases, techniques that worked well just a year ago are no longer effective. There are two reasons this may happen. The first is when people rely on techniques that fall into either a gray or black area with Google's guidelines. If enough people start using this type of technique, Google will take action against them. Since that action can mean losing all search engine traffic, Web Strategy Plus always recommends sticking to SEO techniques that fall within Google's guidelines.

The other reason a technique that used to work well may no longer be effective is it gets used by too many sites. Even if the technique isn't breaking any guidelines, search engine optimization strategies that become very common aren't going to be enough to move the needle for a website in a meaningful way. So if you're considering enlisting professional search engine optimization services, it's important to choose a digital marketing agency that understands Google's guidelines but is also always looking for which technique within that area will provide a meaningful edge.

To help highlight some of the types of practices that can get your website to the top of Google for keyword phrases that your potential customers are using, we want to highlight four of the best SEO techniques for the upcoming year:

1. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

As more people use mobile devices to get online, Google has continued to increase the amount of emphasis it places on speed. One way to increase how fast your website loads on mobile is to integrate Google's AMP technology into your website. By utilizing AMP, you can optimize your site to load faster, which in turn will appeal to Google's ranking algorithm.

2. Local SEO

Part of Google's focus on delivering the most relevant results possible is providing local options whenever it makes sense. Ensuring your website is fully optimized for local search results can open up new possibilities that you may not have even realized were available. That's why the right local SEO services can be so valuable.

3. Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are a special block that Google often displays when users type in a question. Because this is the very first thing that Google displays for relevant queries, creating a strategy for featured snippets and then implementing this strategy into all your content creation efforts can yield significant results.

4. Video SEO

While video was huge during 2016 and only stands to become an even bigger driver of online activity in 2017, very few businesses are utilizing this medium as part of their SEO efforts. By not only creating interesting videos on a regular basis, but also optimizing them for search prior to publishing, you can get your business in front of viewers who are eager to consume online video.

If you want to ensure that you're taking advantage of all the right SEO techniques for your business this year, be sure to contact Web Strategy Plus for a free consultation.