Knowledge is power. Yet the knowledge many businesses have about SEO resembles less of a concrete understanding and more of a vague connotation. If your website is drowning amid never-ending search engine updates, here are five must-know facts to preserve it.
1. Your customers care about title tags and meta descriptions.
Your website should deliver on its promises. Inaccurate title tags and meta descriptions may lead to an initial click, but customers soon realize they’ve been duped and leave quickly, increasing your bounce rate and decreasing their opinion of your business. Make sure every page of your website has a 70-character title tag that encapsulates the page’s subject, and a 156-character meta description that provides an overview of the content. For example, when searching for “marketing agency Lebanon,” Fresh Creative’s home page pops up with a title tag indicating the services provided and a meta description elaborating on those services, as well as providing the name and location of our agency.
2. Readability trumps keywords.
Once upon a time, keywords were placed abundantly in copy to make keyword density—and, as a result, a page’s rank—higher. Today, Google’s ranking algorithm embraces user experience over keyword density. To please Google, therefore, copy must be well-written, original, easy to read, and contain an appropriate number of keywords. Yoast currently recommends anywhere between 0.5% and 2.5% for an overall keyword density. In other words, a bridal shop shouldn’t use “wedding dress” 500 times on its website, but it should employ a variety of related words in its easy-to-read copy.
3. A mobile-responsive website is non-negotiable.
SEO encompasses more than the copy on your page. Google penalizes every website that does not have a mobile-responsive design—and with good reason! According to recent studies, roughly 60% of all website traffic is coming from mobile users. If more than half of your business’s audience first encounters you on a smartphone, doesn’t it make sense to have a website they can read? Pinch and zoom will not win your customers’ hearts.
4. Speed matters for SEO.
While loading speed may not affect your business’s rank as much as relevant content does, it counts enough that Google created PageSpeed Insights. Google’s ranking algorithm recognizes if your website takes a long time to load or, even worse, times out while loading. When taking into account the role social media plays in sending people to your website, and that social traffic generally tends to have a higher bounce rate, speed becomes even more of a priority.
5. Search engines innovate every day.
Google alone has developed five updates this year. While it’s tempting to approach SEO as a once-and-done task, websites require consistent updates to stay on top of changes in ranking algorithms. Enlisting the help of an SEO expert will keep your company ahead of the curve and within the customer’s reach.
Search engine optimization doesn’t have to strike fear in your heart. These five must-know facts offer a simple place to start what can be a complex, ongoing task. If you’re ready to dive in to all SEO offers, click here for help.
