According to SEO Refugee, the three essential elements of effective SEO are, “Useful information, effective communication, and high quality backlinks.” Search engine optimization, or SEO, is on everyone’s minds these days. Ecommerce sales, or sales made online, topped $1 trillion worldwide for the first time in 2012, with further growth anticipated in the upcoming years.
How sites rank in search engines has a big impact on the percentage of ecommerce sales they receive. Looking for ways to get your website optimized for search? Here is your guide to basic SEO techniques.
1. High Quality Backlinks
Inbound links occur when another site references your website in a link. These links establish your site as “relevant,” and Google uses this as a ranking factor. In the past, you might have been able to buy 500 such links for a little money and seen it make a difference. Today, Google pays attention to how well the content matches up to the highlighted links. If you get linked to a page that has a lot of people reading and forwarding it, this will be a lot more valuable to your site than 50 links that only get a few visitors each because their content is not useful for others.
2. Effective Communication
Most businesses work with website optimization companies, rather than trying to manage everything themselves. For better SEO, communication is key. There is often a big gap in understanding between what a business expects to happen, and what their SEO company thinks they want. It’s important that anyone writing your content understands your product positioning and what does or doesn’t appeal to your client base.
3. Useful Information
Did you know that blogs are great for SEO? Google likes promoting “fresh” content to users, and consistent blogging helps keep you near the top. Companies with blogs also have 434% more indexes pages for web searches. So what information should you have in blogs or other SEO content? The key is being useful to your readers. Always ask yourself, “Would a reader get what they came for after reading this post”? If you post a paragraph full of keyword loaded gobbledygook, the answer is probably no. If you post a useful piece full of fun facts and industry insights, the answer is more likely “yes.”
How have you gotten your website optimized for search? Let us know your best SEO techniques!