The Importance of SEO and How You Can Make It Work For You

We assume you have jumped on board with how important it is to create your own content. More than just creating your own content, you need to create your own GREAT content.

But what is the point of creating great content if no one can find and consume it? There isn’t much of a point, but this is where SEO comes into play; to make sure your content is found and consumed.

Before getting into SEO, you need to understand exactly how search engines work.

What search engines like Bing and Google do is send “crawlers” across the World Wide Web. These crawlers jump from page to page, via links, indexing the content and URL of the pages and housing the info in a data center. This information is then remembered when certain search queries are used. Search engines take your content and use it as answers to their users’ questions.

So, how do you make sure that search engines display your content ahead of everyone else’s? There are formulas that come into play when determining where you rank in search results. However, if your site has fresh content, backlinks, and traffic, you are well on your way to improving your search rankings.

Now that you know the basics of how search engines work, and how search results are determined, you want to show off and impress the crawlers of the World Wide Web.

Unfortunately, SEO is as much of a game as it is a job. Search engines are constantly making changes in their formula so that no one can quite pin down exactly what they need to do to come out on top every time. However, as with anything, there are some tricks that are fundamentals to SEO best practices.

Below are 3 basic tips to start building a better online presence.

1) YOUR URL IS IMPORTANT:

Along with internal linking to other pages on your site, you should customize your URLs if possible. When customizing your URLs, you should use a hierarchy approach to your URL structure. Customizing your URL is important, as you need to include terms that the user is likely to search for.

A good example of a URL would be: “http://www.creativedgedentistry.com/blog/cosmetic-dentistry/teeth-whitening.” The reason that this URL is good, is that it contains multiple terms that a user would search for. Even more so, the crawlers of the web see that this page pertains to both cosmetic dentistry and teeth whitening.

An example of a bad URL would be: “http://www.creativedgedentistry.com/blog/tg76a028.” This URL does not contain common search terms for the user or terms that the crawlers can index properly.

2) WORK YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS:

Social media channels are important for a couple of reasons. First off, social media can drive traffic to your website, which builds its popularity. Second, search engines now view articles being shared and retweeted as being more relevant and popular. Having your articles shared on social media will make search engines see your site as having more authority. The more popularity and authority your site has, the better it will rank.

How can you increase shares on social media?

• Build a network of small businesses in your area. If this network will reciprocate shares and retweets, you will be well on your way to gaining more popularity and authority. If you do not have a network, identify some small businesses in your area and begin sharing their content to start building a relationship.
• Identify key players/businesses in your area. If you can build a relationship with this person or entity, you can build a relationship based on sharing and retweeting each other’s content.
• Build your social audience. If you can post intriguing and interesting content on your social media channels that isn’t found on your site, you can start attracting a bigger audience on these channels.

3) COPY THE ADS THAT APPEAR IN ADWORDS.

We live in a world where the title and description of your blog are just as important as the content itself. The reason for this is that you have to capture the attention of your consumer in a matter of moments or they will never read your content—no matter how great it is. To help build great titles and descriptions, you should copy what is being used in Adwords. These titles and descriptions are designed to maximize clicks and have been A/B tested over and over again to be fully optimized.

Do you still want to further improve your SEO?

We welcome you to schedule a phone call to see how we can help you skyrocket up the search engine rankings.

Author: Kathy Jiamboi

Owner of Creativedge Marketing, where growth-oriented dentists find dental practice marketing strategies and advice to take their practice to a new and higher level.