Let's Talk SEO

Building a great website is one part of establishing your web presence. Ensuring that your customers find you when they need you is another component altogether!

If you’re like many of our clients, you know that building SEO is important. However, the topic of SEO can quickly get very confusing and overwhelming. Where do you even begin?

Basic principles of SEO

The search engines:

Are in the business of returning the highest quality information to users based on their queries.

Use sophisticated algorithms that guard against being manipulated! In fact, they penalize websites for manipulative tactics such as word stuffing.

Reward you with authority over TIME as a result of searchers finding quality information on your website again and again.

Consider a huge amount of data points when determining your rank. Most single tactics will not make or break your authority. It’s the consistency of your work in adhering to best practices over time that matters.

How to build SEO

How do we know what matters the most? How do we prioritize? Where do we start?

According to Moz.com, experts in SEO, “The foundation of good SEO begins with ensuring crawl accessibility.”

If the search engines don’t know that your site exists, they can’t index it and return it in search. From there, the path to better SEO quickly turns to high quality copywriting that incorporates keywords. If you don’t know what words your customers use to find you, your written copy may not connect with their searches.

Here’s a quick explanation of “how to build SEO” adapted from Moz.com.

Seven steps to successful SEO:

Crawl accessibility so engines can read your website
Compelling content that answers the searcher’s query
Keyword optimized to attract searchers & engines
Great user experience including a fast load speed and compelling UX
Share-worthy content that earns links, citations, and amplification
Title, URL, & description to draw high CTR in the rankings
Snippet/schema markup to stand out in SERPs

Please note that the BOLD line items are included and addressed as part of Bellaworks’ website builds and/or hosting services. The rest of the items on the list are available as extra services.

Also from Moz.com and essential to understand-

“Your page has to provide value to searchers and be better than any other page Google is currently serving as the answer to a particular query.”

And…

“We like to call this 10x content. If you create a page on a keyword that is 10x better than the pages being shown in search results (for that keyword), Google will reward you for it, and better yet, you’ll naturally get people linking to it! Creating 10x content is hard work, but will pay dividends in organic traffic.”

You may have heard it before, but make no mistake, CONTENT IS KING!

There are no “easy” ways to create great content. Writing compelling copy takes WORK!

What SEO work is included in a Bellaworks website design/development project?

Every client is different and has different goals regarding SEO.

However, Bellaworks knows there are certain best practices that any quality website must adhere to.

Bellaworks’ website design/development projects include these pieces of work which will contribute to SEO over time:

Appealing and intuitive design
Device responsive, mobile friendly design and development
Clear navigation
Redirects from old website pages
Installation of Google Analytics
Submission of sitemaps to Google
Installation of Yoast SEO plugin that provides helpful SEO feedback on your copy

Bellaworks’ hosting services (optional – 6 or 12 month plans available), support your SEO with:

SSL Security certificate
Fast website loading speeds

What else can I do to help build SEO?

As you’ve read, high-quality copywriting is essential for building SEO.

Many of our clients choose to write their own copy, which can work quite fine and be the best choice for some companies.

For clients who want to compete for customers and organic search position, we highly recommend our keyword research and copywriting services.

Extra steps that will help boost SEO:

Keyword research
Quality copywriting with strategic use of keywords
Keyword optimized headlines
Internal links (links between your website’s pages)
Alt tags that describe your photos using keywords
Blog posts that feed the search engines new material
Customized URLs for blog posts
Consistent use of business name, address, and phone number
Promoting your website over social media

Other marketing specialists can discuss:

External links (links to other high-quality websites)
Social media campaign that promotes your website

A Word About TIME

Your new website is likely up against other sites that have years of history and authority built with the search engines.

Be patient, stay the course, and adhere to the proven best practices.

It is going to take TIME and a steady stream of traffic to show the search engines that visitors are finding quality information on your website.

By TIME, we mean it can take a YEAR and OFTEN MUCH LONGER to build authority.

However, once you have built up the authority, you will be rewarded with organic search leads.