Here’s one beautiful truth, how Google ‘decides’ one website is more relevant for a search term than another, is a total mystery….
Well, hang on a minute! True Google does not publish exactly how its indexing, crawling, and robots really work. But it does give us hints, recommendations, and protocols, from this the website designer will make important decisions regarding the client’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Now if I could guarantee every website I work on will be ‘number one’ on search engine results pages (SERP), via an organic search, well, I would not be writing this – because I am now a billionaire busy on my private yacht heading to my private island for a trip to the moon with Sir Richard. Unfortunately, It’s just not that simple. There’s no shortcut to the top.
Basically, it’s a lot of hard work, it’s a lot of protocol, it’s a lot of research – data gathering and it’s a lot of time.
Why is Google so important? Well to some businesses its actually not – I have done lots of websites including one recently, a farm based out of the Redlands, where they are running at full capacity and not looking for new business, but they needed a brochure website to point clients too and an interactive map for their truck drivers. But, generally speaking, if you are looking for new business then to have a website that’s optimized so Google (Google dominates the search engine industry as of writing, about 78% of all searches are done with Google) can understand the site is of course, paramount. The figures are staggering – Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. There are definitely people out there looking for your product or services.
Without getting too bogged down in technical terminology and I’m not going to cover every element of SEO it’s just to huge an area, here are some basic principles that all good website marketing campaigns should be doing to help search engines ‘serve’ their website when its specific keywords are used. ‘Keywords’ in SEO describe what the words are in a search query to find a service, product or whatever, ’Miami, website, designer’ for instance.
Search Engine Optimization is split into two main areas; On-site and off-site.
On-site SEO includes:
This is a cliché I know, but it stands true here more than anywhere before. Actually, I’m going to climb to the top the Panorama Tower in Brickell and yell this as loud as I can… CONTENT IS KING!! A website can have all the correct metadata, super slick design, interactive animations, fast page loading and endorsed by the Queen, but if its content sucks, search engines will simply ignore. Creating, coherent, keyword driven, web-friendly content is difficult – Easthall Design can help.
Meta-data is the second most important on-site SEO. Meta-data (when referring to website design), is a protocol applied to websites so Google’s (and all other major search engines) spiders (software that reads websites) can ‘understand’ what it is your website does, how relevant it is and makes a decision where to index your website (Search Engines generally record websites onto their servers about once every 3 months, hence SEO can take time).
Other relevant on-site SEO – Page loading times, website structure, visual design. If a website does well in a search result once a user views the website – there is another battle to be won including; calls to action, user experience, and user interface design.
Off-site SEO includes;
Backlinking – this is the concept of getting higher ranking (or higher authority) websites to link to your website. An extreme example of this would be CNN.com running a fun story on say, Miami website design companies then linking to my easthalldesign.com website. Pow! That will drive a lot of traffic to my website, search engines would quickly see this and possibly serve my website higher up the search results.
Social media – to most it’s a bit of fun, but for a business, it can really help drive traffic to their website. It’s also a really good way to have direct conversations with potential clients. Search engines like to see the social algorithms too, but I do recommend researching – social outlets have very specific demographics.
Other off-site SEO considerations; Traditional media (TV, print ads), Pay Per Click (Google’s bread and butter), email broadcasting and of course blogging.
We specialize in on-site SEO, all our websites will have the latest SEO protocols targeting your specific area. Learn more about our SEO services here. Or for a free SEO review Contact EasthallDesign today
