What is the most important thing your website needs to help your business grow? In fact it is probably the most important component both online and offline. . .traffic! Without people visiting your website, your business cannot grow. But you already know that. So how do you get people to find and visit your website?

If I said Search Engine Optimization, many people would have a quizzical look on their face since this is a term most are not familiar with using. However, if you said SEO then many would tend to agree with that terminology. Most are aware that SEO goal is to improve your website’s ranking position and search engine visibility with organic traffic. Organic being a familar term for free traffic.

Every business wants unpaid visitors coming to their website using search. In fact, BrightEdge, says over 53% of all website traffic comes from organic search. Most businesses would like to receive the 95% of web traffic from the first page of Google. Many would really enjoy the first five organic search results where over two-thirds of all clicks. It is not uncommed for some websites improving their traffic over 2000 percent after spending time on their website SEO.

Since eye-tracking studies show 70 – 80% participants ignore paid ads on the right side and look at organic serach results for their search queries, many businesses do not use paid ads for getting traffic to their business. They choose to invest in SEO with its higher return on investment.

It is safe to remind that not all SEO is equal. As the online search changes constantly, winning the top spot in Google page ranking is not a simple achievement. There are may elements to consider. For example technical considerations, content quality, site speed, Google algorythm requirements just to name a few.

Technical SEO

People go to Google and type in the product or service they need to find a solution to their problem or want. Then Google does a thorough search in its system to find specific words that match the request for information. The most relevant search appears in the top of the organic search after the ads.

Improving your technical SEO can help to increase chances of ranking higher in relevant search results giving more clicks to your site. Studies have shown that climbing one place in the organic search results can improve a site’s click through rate over 53%.

Without getting too technical, here are a few of the things involved with technical SEO. Use these terms to do more reserach if you want detailed information.Outbound links – links from your site to another site

• Internal links – links from one of your web pages to relevant older content and links from old content to newer relevant content.
• Site Speed – page speed is an important ranking factor and includes both desktop and mobile search results.
• Robots.txt – this file inside your website gives instructions to search engine crawlers and specifies which parts of your site crawlers can access or ignore. If figured incorrectly it can prevent your website from being indexed by search engines.

There are tools available that can help you find the current status of your technical SEO.

You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to test your website’s performance.
Use robots.text tester to verify that search engines can see your website.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is about helping search engines understand the context and content of your site information, what is the purpose of the information, and what serach query does it answer.
Snippet Optimization – text that summarized each web page in the organic results.

There are tools available to help with improving your sites snippets and robot.txt files such as Yoast SEO and Rank Math plugins for WordPress websites. Incidentally, WordPress is now used by the majority of website builders due to its ease of use and SEO options. It requires very little coding and has many page builders available for setting up websites.

• SEO Title – this is the bold headline that appears in search result pages and is a heavy hitter for Google search results. It should catch reader attention and enhance their desire t click on your snippet.
• Slug Line – text added after url like blog post title or additional page name. Use short relevant keywords here with dashes between words in lieu of underscores, and no capital letters, punctuation or non-english characters.
• Meta Description – use this to tell the search engines what the main substance for the site is about, create a unique description for each page or post wherever possible.
• Featured Snippet – content that appears at the top of Google’s search results highlighted in a separate box. It usually includes definitions, tables, steps and lists.
• Rich Snippet – data formatted and organized in a way that makes it easy for Google to understand. It usually inlcudes reviews, recipes, and events.
  Both snippets and title are keyword relevant for being found on Google.
  Breadcrumbs – a line of text that is typically located at the top of a page to help visitors navigate your website.
• Content Optimization – writing content that not only provides valuable information for yourreaders, it also assists them with a pertinent problem. Content is also used to attract a large number of backlinks which is excellent for your site’s SEO.

Content should feature keywords that your readers will use to find information online. Without keyword stuffing, which will detract from Google searchbots, using conceptually-related terms and synonyms will

To perfect your content, use a free online app, Hemmingway editor, to highlight lengthy, complicated sentences and other common errors. Remember to include one relevant Call To Action to convert your visitors into customers.

Mobile Optimization – over half of web traffic today is using mobile devices and has a direct impact on your site’s SEO. Google has placed top importance for mobile optimization so test your website’s performance. If you have to press and pinch to enlarge text on a mobile device, you site is not optimized and will hinder your placement in organic search.

SEO is Essential
By following the information in this article, you will be confident that your website will attract the traffic you want, but will also rank better in search engines. There are popular no-cost SEO plugins that will help setup your site’s SEO mentioned above. If you have any questions about optimizing your SEO, contact us and we will be glad to share additional information with you.