"What Are the Benefits of Listing a Business in SEO?" by Lesley M. Patterson

What Are the Benefits of Listing a Business in SEO? –

By Lesley M. Patterson from WritingBeautifully.com

The benefits of listing a business in SEO (also known as Search Engine Optimization), are endless and essential for every business. If you wish to get more clientele and reach your targeted audiences, SEO is vital! SEO is not only for large Firms and corporations but is a valuable asset to use in literally any operation. Having the right SEO is priceless, as it can make or break any business online.

SEO affects how your company or services are placed in the search engine results for those who are looking for such a business. Those who rank higher in SEO are placed towards the very top of all of the results for a search. When a prospective customer or client types in specific keywords while looking for these (and other related) types services or products, the better your SEO, the more likely it is that they’ll discover your business.

SEO will help to determine what page precisely and spot your business will occupy in these results. And, as we are aware, people will usually select a result that ranks the highest. (Who wants to search through pages and pages of content?) So, the solution to this is naturally utilizing SEO in every way possible to rank the highest that you can. The reason for this is so that your businesses SEO can effectively reach the people who are searching for it and other similar business (such as your rivals or competition businesses). You need to get very accurate and make sure to do research often for adequately using your tailored SEO so that you’re on top of your industry, brand, product, or service. The reason being so that your business will come up first when it’s searched.

Let’s discuss the basics for those business owners who may not yet be aware of what SEO is and how it all works. It will help in boosting your business, be it big or small, along its journey towards very profitable success and renown. SEO is made up of many different types of best practices, direct actions, and most of all, strategies. The point of all of these methods is to improve your web site’s search engine ranking, hence the name: “Search Engine Optimization.” There are a couple of different kinds of SEO, and those are On-Page and Off-Page.

Let’s talk about what the On-Page SEO is. Your On-Page SEO represents a website's keyword presence, its site’s speed level, the header text, content structure and quality, and overall page optimization. It refers to doing everything on your business website to optimize it. These include but are not limited to simple SEO tactics, such as using the trendiest and most updated, researched keywords. Being sure to optimize the website’s meta description correctly, it’s HTML code, all tags, and title tags, maintaining your links, and anything similar. It means covering all the bases of the basics of your website are included and in their entirety. A website without adequately optimized and carefully maintained SEO can easily fall behind in its search ranking. It is, therefore, especially important to keep in mind that these things must be updated often and stayed on top of effective search engine optimization.

One of the most critical factors of On-Page SEO is the keywords that your website uses. Be aware that you must research to find the keywords that will work most effectively up your site rank. This practice is known as “keyword optimization,” and it is a cornerstone of all of the SEO that is practiced today. The main opus centers on “long-tail keywords” especially. These are said to fit the searching habits of modern users better than the “short-tail keywords.” The difference between “long-tail keywords” and “short tail keywords” is that the long-tail is longer and usually consist of a few carefully chosen words or phrases, while the “short-tail keywords” are often one-word and more general and specific than the long-tail keywords.

Keywords are the words that your audience is actively searching for and the ones that they are entering into search engines (such as Google) the most often. These are words that are concerning whatever service or product that relates to your business type and industry. When doing your keywords, always think of what words your clientele is searching up. Do your very best to both optimize and even create your website content around those same keywords. Utilizing this strategy will significantly increase your chances of being ranked higher on your website’s SEO to a great extent.

Another way to work on your “On-Page SEO” is to add a well-written meta description to your website. A meta description is the short description that is shown under your URL on search engine results, and also below headlines on social posts. The meta description should describe the content of the page while (most importantly) being sure to use any relevant keywords related to what it is that your website is offering. This practice is done to ensure that your business website will be picked up by search engine crawlers that search website content. Doing this will determine its data and ranking by doing so. Your meta description should stay under 300 characters to make sure that the entire description is shown under the search result for your business.

Next, we will discuss the On-Page work of your websites Alt Text. Alt Text is a phrase or a word that is attributed to picture files stored on your site. That very phrase or word can also help in your SEO because it can be indexed and searched for. For instance, if you use an image on your blog and it relates to strawberry shortcake recipes, you can inject the alt-text for that image and label it as “strawberry-shortcake-recipes,” then your graphic of it will begin to rank for that exact phrase in image search results.

Title Tags are another helpful On-Page SEO technique that refers to the title of your website, as in the main heading that you see in the search engine result pages. The title tag is another significant opportunity to include all of the relevant keywords related to your site, and it will boost the searchability of your page.

SSL/HTTPS is an essential factor in your On-Page SEO. It refers to making sure that you enable the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) secure technology, as it is necessary for improving your website's security, visibility, and trustworthiness. By enabling SSL, you are taking steps to keep third parties off of your web server as well as off of your websites visitors' web servers. Doing so makes sure that the information entered on your site is safe. Search Engines such as Google strongly prefer websites that are SSL enabled, so it is of the utmost importance that you do so.

Now we’ll go over URL Structure in On-Page SEO. Having an organized URL structure is essential for modern-day marketers as it let’s search engines crawl with ease from page-to-page on your website, plus it makes website navigation easier for your visitors. Your URLs should contain keywords that assert the pages that they are directed to. Easy-to-Understand URLs are the most likely ones to earn you clicks, and also help search engine crawlers on your website.

Pillar pages are another On-Page SEO tactic that is popular today. It consists of marketers dedicating pages to trending topics that their prospects are searching for and then linking all related pages back to that pillar page. For example, let’s say you want to make a pillar page that is dedicated to dog grooming techniques. With your pillars identified, you can now make your content and your URL strategy tailored to those pillars. Link all of the related content back to that main pillar page, thus helping to boost your searchability on those specific topics.

Internal Linking is another factor of On-Page SEO that internally links related pages on your website. Linking to these different relevant pages on your site makes it much easier for search engines crawling and indexing your site, plus it has the benefits that keeping visitors on your page longer will bring to your business.

Lastly, let’s go over page performance, which covers the content quality and structure, as well as the ultimate performance of your website. This step is also a vital aspect of On-Page SEO, as pages that are slow and take a long time to load will not render correctly on mobile devices. That will have the negative result of ranking that site lower in search engine result pages (SERPs) as it affects your bounce rate severely. That is a critical factor to search engines that evaluate your website, so marketers must consider the image file sizes of their pages and minimize the amount off of CSS/JavaScript.

Now, let’s discuss what Off-Page SEO consists of. It means doing absolutely everything in your power to exercise control of your website’s representations concerning anything that affects your sites ranking off of your website, (especially anything that relates to its ranking). Off-Page SEO is all about maintaining the number and the quality of your website’s backlinks from other websites, managing your website's reputation, the use of social media exposure, and your site's domain authority.

Ultimately, regarding backlinks, the general rule of thumb is that the more sites linking to your content, the better, as this increases the domain authority that Google will grant to your website. Doing this can sufficiently boost your business ranking. There are both paid and organic solutions for addressing this that can produce effective results. Examples of them are guest blogging and seeking out others in your profession who would agree to share your content.

Onto domain authority, which is measured on a scale of 1-100. Domain authority is the number assigned to you by search engines that determines the strength of your website. It’s like a grade. Sites with a higher domain authority will be granted preference in search results, while those with lower domain authority will rank towards the bottom. Your domain authority is determined by several different factors such as how long you’ve had your domain name (the rule is always, the longer, the better!), the history of the said domain name, the total number of backlinks that your domain has, and the amount of 404 pages. Making sure that your website is technically stable and safe, and follows SEOs best practices can help you to increase your domain authority. It also helps you to improve your businesses ranking in search results.

Lastly, let’s address social promotion in Off-Page SEO and how it affects your page ranking. While it is not directly linked to the interactions on a social media post, the posts that do generate a good number of clicks will help to boost the traffic to that site and can create a large number of link shares. Content that is shared to Google+ is indexed right away, which can also help out your Business website a great deal in its ranking.

Both On-Page and Off-Page SEO techniques are essential in maintaining a high ranking for your business website. They can ensure that your business is in the lead of its competitors. Ultimately, sites with higher search rankings will be the most clicked-on and visited, thus generating more traffic, potential customers, and ultimately more business for your product or service. If you can make your websites SEO stronger and more powerful than all of the related ones in your category, you can rank #1 concerning that specific query.

No matter whether your business is large or small, struggling, just starting, or already successful, brand new or old, SEO is a crucial determining factor in your business success. Even if you were the only one in your type of business, SEO is still golden and essential to your business success. Investing in your website’s SEO is making a direct investment in its livelihood as it can significantly increase its profitability and visibility. If you stay consistent with your SEO, it can produce very pleasing results that help you to keep your Business growing and prospering. While you can never precisely control many of the factors which surround us all, you CAN control, your SEO. If your business could be directly influenced in a positive way regarding its traffic, leads, sales, and ranking, why would you not utilize it? SEO can make you a leader in your industry and even a more globally recognized business, as it can directly influence its potential and effectiveness. If you want to be #1 or be the highest rank possible, then sufficient and researched, active, and up-to-date SEO is the answer.

Article Copyright 08/03/2019 by Lesley M. Patterson AKA Lady Opaque at www.WritingBeautifully.com