SEO
Push further.
Achieve more.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business on Google, Bing, and other search engines.
The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective customers to your business.
How does SEO work?
Search engines such as Google and Bing use bots to crawl pages on the web, going from site to site, collecting information about those pages and putting them in an index. Think of the index as a giant library where a librarian can pull up a book (or a web page) to help you find exactly what you’re looking for at the time.
Next, algorithms analyze pages in the index, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors or signals, to determine the order pages should appear in the search results for a given query.
Example
Let’s say you run a traditional, vegan-only pizzeria in Gastown, Vancouver. Depending on how clients use Google, they might just type Restaurant, and Google will return 4,450,000,000 restaurants.
Not ideal.
The more defined the search, the lower the overall results will be.
Providing Google, and other search engines, with the proper information, will increase the chance that a client will find you.
In this example, it is clear that adding the right keywords to your site, is crucial to your success.
| Search Query | Results |
|---|---|
| Restaurant | 4,450,000,000 |
| Italian Restaurant | 544,000,000 |
| Vegetarian Italian Pizzeria | 34,600,000 |
| Vegetarian Italian Pizzeria Vancouver | 3,180,000 |
| Neapolitan Vegetarian Restaurant Vancouver | 242,000 |
| Vegan Pizzeria Gastown | 3 |
How do I do SEO the right way?
In the above example, we use keywords to help Google understand what we do and where. But there are a ton of other ways to improve the SEO of your site. Search engines look for elements, including title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links (also known as backlinks). And that's just to name a few.
Search engines also look at site structure and design, visitor behaviour, and other external, off-site factors to determine how highly ranked your site should be in its Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs.)
Below we show just a few of the many criteria Google looks for when indexing your site
H1
Search engine crawlers prefer content that is structured properly and has a hierarchy regarding heading tags.
The H1 tag is the most important and tells search engines what it is your content is about.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are the small blurbs you see in search results under the page titles. These give a quick description of what the content on the page is about and help both the people searching and the search engine crawlers understand what to expect on each page.
Low Word Count
Without enough text on a page, Google will have trouble understanding what the content is about.
If Google doesn't know what the content is about, it won't be able to rank your content for the search terms you are targeting.
4xx Status Code
4xx status errors happen when traffic people trying to visit your website aren't able to access certain pages. This can happen for a variety of different reasons and needs to be checked carefully. These kinds of errors create a negative experience for your user, which in turn can indirectly impact your SEO and rankings.
Title Tag Too Short
Title tags need to deliver an important idea to your potential readers in a few words. But the title tag can't be too short. If the title tag is less than 30 characters, it will be difficult for search engines to understand what the content is about and decreasing the likelihood of ranking.
Poorly Formatted URL
To create a URL that is truly SEO-friendly, one must take into account certain factors that Google deems important for rankings. Some of these factors include the URL length not exceeding 120 characters, how relevant the wording in the title is to the content in the post, avoiding symbols and underscores within the slug, and so on.
Turning the right screws
To summarize, SEO can be challenging and intimidating because search engines like Google are always changing and updating their algorithms. There is always something new to discover that could potentially make a huge impact on your company’s bottom line.
Finding the screw
Simple
Turning the right screw
Complicated
Contact us.
SEO is part of every stage of our web design projects, but it doesn't end there. Our expert strategists can provide thorough analytics and SEO support to help you achieve your goals.
We love this stuff – let us help you turn that right screw in the right way.