User-Friendly Tips for Improving Your SEO Organically

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and the greatly simplified explanation is that SEO is the setting up a website in a way that makes it easy for a search engine (like Google) to understand so the search engine will send the site more traffic. For a more advanced explanation, you can check out our previous blog answering this exact question.

Why Is SEO Important?

Across the internet, answers to this question can range from very simplified to extremely complex, which can make the concept of SEO difficult to understand – especially if it’s something that’s new to you and your website.

Website traffic, specifically mobile traffic, has increased significantly in recent years. This is important to note for a number of reasons: more people are looking for content, products, and services – something that your website provides. The web has become integral in influencing the buying decisions of users. Knowing how to  draw these users to your website is key, and this is where SEO comes in.

The most important thing you need to know is this: Google averages 40,000 searches per second.  Organic SEO is the process of improving how your website ranks in search engine results compared to all other websites. In this instance, “organic” refers to traffic coming from a search engine, as opposed to traffic from another site (called referral traffic) or from paid advertising (called PPC or ‘pay per click’ traffic). The more time you invest in your organic SEO, the better your chances of achieving a high-ranking position in search results when a potential customer searches a query that relates to your business.

For example, if you’re a flower shop owner with the website Flowers4Ever.com, and someone in your city is searching “red rose flowers near me,” you want your store to appear in the search results. Improving your organic SEO can help your website move higher in the results, thus making customers more likely to visit your website. With more and more consumers searching for products online, this has become crucial as users are much less likely to visit websites that are not listed on the first page of search results.

Improving Your Organic SEO

You acknowledge that your website’s SEO needs some work, now what? Here’s where our helpful tips come in. We’ve worked with hundreds of clients to improve Search Engine Optimization, a large portion of whom were new or inexperienced at SEO. So where do you start if you’re at the very beginning?

We always recommend gathering a baseline of your website’s analytics so you have a point from which to measure growth. Look at key factors like how many users come to your website every day, how long they stay on your site, and which page they leave from. You may also want to Google your business’ name to see where your website appears in the search results. If you are not on the first page of search results even after typing in the proper name of your business, you are definitely in need of organic SEO improvements.

Start by Cleaning House

When prioritizing which task(s) you need to take on first, we recommend a clean-up before you begin to create new content. This includes:

Cleaning up URLs. Your website’s URLs should be clean and easy to follow. The user should be able to understand what a page is about simply by looking at the URL. (A good example of this would be: mediag.com/blog/all-about-SEO)

Fixing any critical errors. Critical errors include 400-level and 500-level errors (like the ever-notorious 404 redirect error in which a “page not found” error is displayed. If you’re unsure of how to do this on your own, it’s best to seek help from an experienced professional.

Improving links throughout your site. Incorporating links to highly ranked articles, blogs, forums, and social media sites can boost the weight of your website domain. This means that search engines consider it more important because it is interwoven with other reputable websites.

Using best practices for HTML structures. This may sound complicated, but it simply means that the content you have is clearly broken down by section tags in the HTML.

• Page Title: H1
• Subtitle/Secondary title: H2, H3… H6
• Paragraph: P
• List item: LI

Your Organic SEO Approach

There’s an awful lot to take in when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.  It can feel incredibly overwhelming to newcomers, which is why it can be beneficial to get a professional involved. Building organic SEO is a slow and steady process but, if done right, it can have lasting positive effects on your website and business as a whole. Just know that these changes will not occur overnight, and it something you will have to work at – adjusting your approach as time goes on to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

There are free tools available online to assist you in your efforts, but know that organic SEO is largely a guessing game and the results you see may not always be 100% accurate. That being said, using these tools will be able to guide you in making educated decisions that benefit your website.

Have questions about the aforementioned SEO tasks or need assistance getting started? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us through our contact us form, by email at inquiry@mediaG.com, or call us at (248) 687-7888. We have decades of marketing experience under our belts, so we’ll be able to make sure your website is strong and search engine friendly.