Businesses throughout the Portland Metro Area are hearing a lot about search engine optimization or SEO. It's been a featured topic at various tech and marketing conferences around town and more and more service providers are opening up shop to help develop a better stream of clients and customers to Portland area business. But ‘awareness' of the importance of SEO can sometimes be a mixed bag. Many people don't understand what SEO is, or that there are many kinds of SEO and that you don't have to be an expert to improve your SEO. There is both on-page and off-page SEO. Let's take a look at both types.
All most businesses know is that the Yellow Pages and print ads are no longer driving forces behind getting leads and traffic to their business. Now, the vast majority of searches and inquiries start online. And SEO is work required to position your business to be found in search results.
The thing to remember is that SEO tactics change continuously based on the algorithms that the search engines choose to use to help their audience find what they're looking for. The big key to remember is that the search engines are trying to deliver excellent results for their target audience. Your job is to help them.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO consists of anything you do to improve search engine traffic and results such as inbound links, trust building, social media, blog promotion, videos, press releases, commenting and more. You can use all of these tactics to help build up your website's traffic and thus your conversions.
Comment on Blogs and Forums
Even if you're not allowed a link back to your website, your comments on blogs and forums do not go unnoticed – especially today when most use identification procedures via Gravatar or Google to find you through your profile.
Social Media Posts and Promotions
When you write a blog post or publish anything on your blog use social media to promote it. Not only will you get more traffic to your posts, you'll get more links to your website via your general social media promotions.
Conduct Interviews
Give interviews on radio shows, on blogs, and more. The more authority you can build by being interviewed, the more links you'll get back to your website and products, and the more people will get to know you.
Finally, when it comes to off-page SEO, don't underestimate the power and effectiveness of the good old-fashioned press release to get the word out about your business to the media. Press releases are still excellent ways to publish information about your products and services, especially if you can tie it to a popular human interest story and news of the day.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO consists of anything you do on your website to ensure that you get more traffic to your website via the search engines without paying anything for the traffic. Creating perfectly optimized pages is as simple as adding a little extra effort.
Publish Targeted Content
If your content is high quality, unique, and relevant to your audience, this will help them find you. They'll look for words that are inside that content and be sent to your pages.
Headings on Pages
Using keyword-rich phrases for the headings on your website, including your blog posts, will help search engines find you too. Plus the words will be something your audience will focus on as they scan your page.
Check Grammar and Spelling
You want people who visit your website to come away believing you have authority on the topic that's in your niche. Therefore, it's important to double check your grammar and spelling.
Code Your Site Right
Within images, headings, descriptions and more, there are ways to use metatags to give the search engine clues about the topic on your blog or website. Use them properly to describe images and the subject matter, so that your audience will find you.
Using both on- and off-page SEO is an effective way to ensure that you set up each page on your site properly. If you use self-hosted WordPress, you can use various plugins like SEO Yoast or All-In-One SEO to help guide you for on-page SEO.
Don't You Dare Try Going It Alone
SEO isn't vital for all business, but when it is needed, it's not something you should enter into casually. There are far too many opportunities to be scammed or sold a poor quality service based on nefarious practices that can easily penalize your site. Don't let that happen. Our team of seasoned, Google Certified professionals can build SEO campaigns to get you found and get more dollars coming your way. The next step is simply to learn more and schedule a time for us to chat so we ca better understand you needs and help you identify the best solution.