How do most people find your website? Even if you don’t have the analytics in front of you, I can make a pretty good guess about where most people come from.
It’s from search engines.
According to my analytics, about 70 percent of my website traffic comes from search engines.
And this is where a little thing called Search Engine Optimization comes into play. In short, SEO is how you get onto those first couple of pages on Google search results. And that can lead to more traffic for your website.
And seeing as it’s pretty important for your website, we’re going to spend the next couple of videos discussing ways you can improve your website’s SEO — from the code underneath, to images to even what you blog about.
So today let’s talk a little bit about SEO, what it does, why it matters and give you a little bit of a warning about SEO before we step down this long and winding path.
What is SEO?
So to put it simply, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is pretty complex. It’s more of a series of things you do to increase your website’s page rank on search engines rather than just one single thing.
According to MOZ, SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
In other words, it increases how much search engines like your website and puts you higher in the results which results in more traffic. And specifically it’s more traffic that’s interested in what you offer.
Of course, there’s a whole lot that goes into that. And that’s another topic for another time. But for now let’s just focus on the simple things.
Why is SEO important for your website?
To put it briefly, SEO is how people find your website. By optimizing your website for search engines, you’re increasing the odds that your page is going to be listed higher up in search results. That in turn will result in more people clicking that link to your website and specifically, more people who are actually interested and invested in what you have to offer. That can either be purchasing a product, signing up for a newsletter or giving for a cause.
There is a really good chance that the vast majority of your traffic comes from search engines. So making sure they like your website is a crucial step towards growing your website and, more importantly, your business.
Warning about SEO
Now before we get too far along with SEO, I do want to offer a word of caution. SEO is an ever changing thing. Search engines like Google and Bing are always changing their algorithms to make sure that they’re sure pertinent results to users. So what works one month for SEO may not be as important the next.
Also, it takes time for your website to climb in the rankings. It’s taken me quite the while to rank highly for things other than just developer stuff. And it will for you too.
If you come across someone who says that they’ll increase your website’s ranking completely overnight, run away. At best, you’ll see the typical minor improvements. At worst, it’s a scam. If you reach out for an expert, make sure that they know what they’re doing and that they know that these things take time. Again, slow and steady will win this race.
What this series will be about
As for what this series will focus on, I’m going to give you a high overview over the different aspects of SEO and how you can make them work for your website. This isn’t exactly meant to be an all-encompassing SEO course where you’ll come out an expert.
Instead, the goal is to introduce you to some of these aspects and then encourage you to do more research. Consider this a very introductory course into SEO. Maybe even a bit lower than SEO 101.
Like always, if you have any questions about SEO, go ahead and leave them in comments below or you can reach out on social media.
Next time, we’ll really kick off this SEO series by going over what you can do with your website’s code to help your SEO. Until then, I wish the best for you and your business.
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