Search Engine Optimization – What Is It and How Does It Affect My Website?

Fun fact: Approximately 5.6 billion Google searches are performed every day. This breaks down into 228 million searches per hour, and 2 trillion searches per year! 

With a number this high, there is little doubt that tons of people are searching in Google for a business just like yours. When it comes to you or your competitor coming up at the top of that search, I think we all know who you’d rather see there. This is where SEO comes into play.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be defined as the practice of increasing both the quantity and quality of traffic leading to your website through organic search results. The best part about SEO? It’s free! 

With SEO, there is no bidding or budgeting required – just a lot of hard work! There are many components that go into helping your website rise in the ranks. Some of these include optimizing your website title tags and meta descriptions with your target keywords, writing seo-friendly content, and adding alternative text to images, just to name a few. 

Important Components of SEO

For example, let’s pretend that we are a brand-new pet supply company located in Brooklyn, NY called All About Pets. We are looking to start out strong and boost our online presence, so we turn our attention to SEO. First off, we will need to choose which keywords best represent our brand. Some examples could be “pet supplies brooklyn”, “pet stores in brooklyn ny”, “supplies for cats and dogs in brooklyn”, etc.

We would then take these target keywords and spread them throughout our website content in a way that makes sense strictly for SEO, otherwise Google may see it as being spammy.

We also need to create meaningful title tags and descriptions that will show up in Google Search, for example:

Title: Pet Supplies in Brooklyn NY | All About Pets

Meta Description: All About Pets, serving the Brooklyn community, specializes in food and care supplies for a variety of pets. Give us a call today!

Here is an example of what a search results may look like, with both a title and meta-description.

 

If our content is optimized well, then we will have a greater chance at ranking in Google Search results. If someone were to search “pet supply stores in Brooklyn”, Google would crawl the most relevant websites associated with this search term and prominently display them in search results. If our content is well-written and includes this key term or ones similar, then we will have a better chance of showing up towards the top of the list! 

Google’s World is Always Changing

It is important to remember that Google is always coming out with new algorithms, which unfortunately can hurt SEO rankings. Each historical algorithm update has dealt with different issues, but they have all been designed to improve consumer experience overall. In order to tailor our websites to better suit these updates, we may have to change up a few of our optimizations here or there. A decrease in keyword rankings and traffic may occur, but these will typically bounce back within a week or so.

A detailed explanation of each algorithm update that has occurred since 2012 can be found here.

You should now have a basic understanding of what SEO is and what it consists of. However, we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. SEO is always updating and changing with the times- that’s what makes it fun! There is always something new to learn and implement.

Search Engine Optimization and Digital Marketing Services on Long Island

Here at Ferocious Media, we make use of the latest trends and practices to ensure that your website will reach top organic visibility. That’s what makes our company amazing, we are always staying on top of any SEO changes, even if they are minor. One of our clients recently went up 98 spots in Google Search for one of their terms – this is the kind of work we produce! Our exclusive in-house tools and extensive knowledge has helped tons of clients reach their SEO goals. 

If you are interested in learning more about our digital marketing services, give us a call at 800-454-9103 or fill out our contact form here!

About the Author:Heather Frantz is a Senior SEO Specialist here at Ferocious Media. Graduating from Edinboro University in 2015 with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration – she decided to pursue a career in marketing. Eventually falling into the digital marketing world, Heather discovered her love and talent for all things SEO. Her favorite part of her job is digging through Google Analytics – SEO provides real, measurable results and it’s great to see clients succeed. Heather currently resides in Denver, Colorado with her fiance, two cats, and a handful of reptiles.