By now you would have heard the term SEO flung around here and there, but what is SEO really and how can you use it to dramatically boost your visibility online?

I’ve explained it in seven easy steps, so you can start improving your bottom line sooner and get on with what you love doing most.

What is SEO?

SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. It’s essentially putting little breadcrumbs throughout your content so that when search engines like Google come along to crawl your site it picks up hints and clues as to what your site is all about and what you can offer.

Search engines like creditable, authoritative content to offer their audience so keep your content top notch and avoid copying bad content or duplicating your own.

Remember: a search engine’s number one goal is to answer their audience questions with the best possible match it can find around the web.

Why is SEO important?

It’s important to implement proper SEO into your content because it will help you, firstly to be indexed by search engines and secondly it will aid in increasing your rank on search engine results pages.

The higher ranked your page is the more likely you will have traffic visit your site.

Seven easy steps that explain SEO

1. Publish unique content, regularly. Offering your audience regular, interesting content promotes your reliability and loyalty to your craft. Your followers will most certainly return the loyalty favour.
2. Spread your message. Utilise social media platforms to share your content, build your reputation and generate a following. Further, have others share and reference your content so it reaches their following and so on. Although social media does not directly effect your SEO, generating a following helps build your brand and establishes your position in the market.
3. Backlinking and link building. Linking your content out to creditable, authoritative sources where and when it’s called for can improve your SEO. With that try and get those creditable, authoritative sources to link back to your content. Search engines love links and the trail it leaves behind. Take a look at this handy beginner’s guide to link building to get you started.
4. Keep your site and content tidy and organised. A well-organised, structured site and content allows not only for easy and intuitive navigation by your users but also for search engines. In addition, keep your URLs clean and simple. Additionally, when you’re building a new page make sure your content is formatted properly with headings.
5. Choose simple, meaningful post titles that contain keywords. Creating such titles that entice and interest your audience will aid in increasing traffic to your content. Try and put yourself in your audience shoes, what would they want to read about? Be selective about what keywords you choose to use, a max of five keywords is a good start. To help determine what keywords to use, take a look at Google’s Keyword Planner. It will help you gauge what keywords are popular.
6. Include keywords in your content. Sprinkle your chosen keywords throughout your content so when search engines are indexing your page it’s easier for them to match your page to search results.
7. Create a descriptive tagline in your metadata. The descriptive metadata is a brief summary that search engines pull from your content, to display in their search. It’s a good idea to pop your keywords in this description. Having a well thought out description is very useful to your prospective audience or client than anything else as it can hook them in and compel them to click.

Something to keep in the back of your mind, if you’d like to build your ranking organically you are going to have to be patient and persistent. If you commit to your SEO practice you will reap the benefits eventually.

Alternatively, you can invest in paid advertising and such to build your rankings quicker.

Still feel a bit unsure as to how to implement SEO, take a look at Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

There are countless resources available to help you learn how to use and implement SEO but if you’d like a hands on approach to help, send me an email.

Hi I’m Katherine. I bring nearly 10 years of marketing and communications experience to VOKE Creative Agency as well as my passion for sophisticated branding and content marketing strategy. I’m mad for the outdoors, peanut butter chocolate ice cream and a glass of shiraz.