Back to Basics

If you’re visiting our site and you’re new to SEO, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed. Not to worry—we’ve got you covered! Although SEO implementation is best handled by professionals, the concept isn’t as complicated as it may sound.

What really is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of structuring and working with your website in a way that ensures search engines, such as Google, sees your site and shows it on the search engine results page (SERP). You’re trying to make your site look good to these search engines so you get closer and closer to the top of the SERPs. Optimization incudes keywords, content management, headers, structure, loading speed, back links, and more. The goal is to create high-quality content that speaks to your readers and appeals to search engine’s robots or algorithms.

Does it matter?

Prioritizing SEO is the best way to make sure your site gets seen. Think of it this way: How often do you click through three or four pages of Google results when you search something? Probably not a lot. Most online users don’t scroll past the first page of results. Because many people start their purchase with an online search, your best shot of being visible in this search is to be as close to the top of the list as possible. Good SEO practices will help bring targeted, purposeful traffic to your site over and over again.

Common Terms and Phrases

Here are just a few common terms to be familiar with as you start you SEO journey:

• Title tag – Also called page title, meta title, or SEO title. It’s an important element of a web page and should be no more than 60 characters. It’s the .html tag for your specific web page.
• Meta description – Similar to the title tag, the meta description is also a .html tag tied to a page, but this purpose is to describe the page and attract traffic. It doesn’t directly affect page rankings, but they increase click-through rates. Each page should be a unique meta description.
• Headings – Another type of .html. They’re used to organize content for readers and search engines.
• Indexing – This is the search engine’s process of collecting, organizing, and processing data on the internet.
• Anchor text – The word or phrase attached to the hyperlink that links to another website or page. It’s typically the blue underlined text that you can click on.
• Links – The more high-authority links your website gets, the better your SERP ranking. These include inbound links, also known as backlinks, and well as outbound links, which are links from other sites to yours.
• Crawling – A common term for a search engine’s robots (pieces of code, sometimes called spiders) that scan your pages to index it.

SEO essentially involves three things: on-page SEO (your content), off-page SEO (links), and technical SEO (structure, speed, data). If you use keywords wisely, create good content, and build quality links, you’re on the right track. To ensure you have a solid strategy with appropriate management, contact Utah SEO for assistance.