Faced with a question or challenge, people often Google to find the answer. It shows up on the first page and offers exactly what you’re looking for. How did they know?
Search engines use a digital strategy called search engine optimization (SEO). It’s a technical, complex buzzword that’s prioritized in web design companies, social media consultancies, and marketing agencies. Key City Web breaks down the basics of search engine optimization and how it can help your business succeed.
What is SEO?
According to ClickMinded, “Search engine optimization is … the act of acquiring traffic from search engines to any of the digital assets that you own.”
Most commonly, the largest digital asset is a website. Other digital assets that use SEO include long- and short-form content (blogs, guides, checklists, videos), landing and thank you pages, social media, and so on.
How does SEO work?
SEO covers three fundamental areas of digital strategy: document relevance, authority, and technical optimization.
- Document relevance. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo, are responsible for giving users what they want and eventually monetizing that behavior. Digital strategies are responsible for determining what users are searching for and creating relevant content to help them.
- Authority. Search engines measure for quality, relevant internal and external links; web page clicks; and other types of engagement metrics to find the most popular websites. Once they’re find, search engines compare and rank them based on the amount of engagement.
- Technical optimization. Search engines sort through billions of websites every day. Technical optimization is the practice of making it easier for search engines to find a website.
How can a website design company help with SEO?
A professional web design company, like Key City Web, helps your businesses with SEO through technical optimization, updated website content, and digital strategy.
- Technical optimization. Aside from design and functionality, your website needs technical optimization to rank high in search engines. A web design company ensures that your website has target keywords in the following:
- Page titles
- Meta descriptions
- Web page copy and headers
- Images, videos, and file names
- Alt tags
- URLs
- Title tags
- Internal links and anchor text
- Updated website content. Search engines rank newer content higher than older content. A web design company can help by refreshing an outdated website. They can fix broken internal and external links, update file names of images and videos, and clean up page titles and meta descriptions.
- Digital strategy. Web design isn’t the practice of creating static websites. It involves understanding how a user clicks through, views, and interacts with a website. Web design companies evolve their services to include UX (user experience) best practices and stay updated with industry trends in digital strategy.
For example, UX design is a must-have aspect to reduce bounce rate. (The longer someone stays on the page, the more helpful it must be.) Google’s mobile-first index ranks search engine results based on how they perform on mobile devices. If the content doesn’t load quickly and seamlessly on a cellphone, SEO rankings suffer.
Another example is the influx of web design companies designing and optimizing sites for voice search. As Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Echo, or Google’s Assistant become more mainstream, SEO pivots toward how people speak rather than type questions. The affects how a web designer optimizes a site.
A logical website with relevant content and technical optimization makes it easier for Google and other search engines to catalog and index pages and improve your ranking.
For a free quote and more information about how Key City Web can update or create a custom website for your needs, please contact us.
