In today’s digital age, it’s becoming more and more important that business’ utilize the internet as a marketing tool for both short term and long term goals. A company’s website is a source of expanding an organization’s online presence and customer reach. The Internet is a great way for a business to generate more revenue, leads and sales. As powerful as the internet is as a marketing channel, it’s important that your website is functioning properly for both your customers and search engines.
What exactly is SEO?
Search engine optimization, or “SEO” is the heart and sole of internet marketing. It’s the process of optimizing your business’ website, with the intention of increasing your search engine ranking. In general, the thought is that the higher your website appears in your clients internet searches, the more likely they are to click through to your website and put money in your pockets!
With search engine optimization, you’re at the mercy of the search engines algorithm. However, through years of research and reverse engineering, it’s common practice to tweak and optimize your website to greatly improve, and in some cases almost guarantee that your website will appear on the first page of the search results, and ultimately lead to more business.
Here is a screenshot where I’ve highlighted the different areas of Google’s search engine results page. The section labeled “Organic Search Results” is where search engine optimization will help improve the ranking of your website.
There is absolutely no way to “buy your way to the top” of the Organic search results pages, it’s determined strictly on the relevancy of your website to the search query (as determined by Google’s search algorithm). If you’re interested in having your website show up in the “Sponsored results” sections, MitzClix can help with that as well. Hop on over to our Pay Per Click Search Marketing Page.
How Can SEO Help my Worcester area business?
Did you know that 62% of searchers click on a result on the first page when they run a search query? Only 23% reach the second page (the rest presumably try a different key word or key phrase). By not appearing on the first page for keywords related to your business, you’re losing out on 77% of your potential clients or customers! There is an old saying in traditional brick and mortar business: “Location, Location, Location!”. Well, that theory holds true in the digital world as well. It’s easy to imagine that your position in search engine results, is comparable to the location of your store front. If your storefront is tucked away in a back alley somewhere, chances are you’re missing out on business. Showing up on the second page or beyond in search engine results is no different. You could have the best product or service in your industry, but the bottom line is, if people can’t find you, they can’t buy from you!
How Does Search Engine Optimization Work?
The goal of the search engines is to provide their users with the best customer experience possible, and that means providing as relevant search results as possible. While there are literally hundreds upon hundreds of factors used in search engine algorithms, there are many that we can directly influence to help make your business appear higher in the search results. If you ask just about any SEO professional what the number one factor that determines search engine position is, they will tell you: the number of links pointing to your website!
Search Engine Optimization, when you get right down to it, is really nothing more than a big popularity contest. The search engines make the assumption that the more people who link to your website, the more trustworthy it is. One of the major goals in any SEO campaign is to generate legitimate links from other sites, that point to your business’ website. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but it comes down to networking with other webmasters and providing valuable content or services.
Other major factors that determine where your website will appear in search engine results pages include internal optimization of your website. This is one of the factors you as a business owner have the most control over! Anyone can throw up a webpage, even web pages that look great, but they don’t always have efficient internal SEO structure. Ensuring your website’s HTML code is correct, that your website has proper navigation and internal linking, and relevant, keyword rich titles and headings is a good start to internally optimizing your websites SEO structure.
Not all links are created equal
As stated earlier, the most important metric Google uses to rank your website is the number of sites linking to you. Unfortunately, the world (and Google’s algorithm) is not that simple. Not all links carry the same weight! A single link from a site Google already knows and has a high level of trust with, may be more valuable than hundreds of links from untrustworthy sites. Google determines the “trustworthiness” of a site, using a unique, and proprietary ranking system called PageRank™. PageRank™ was developed by Google to gauge how important one site is in relation to another. While the significance of page rank has decreased over the years in favor of other metrics, it’s still an important part of Google’s algorithm.
Search Engine Optimization for Local Worcster Businesses
Most of the clients we work with here at MitzClix are local small business owners in Worcester, Massachusetts looking to improve sales and find more qualified leads. While SEO in general is a very broad field, there are special considerations to take into account when trying to find local clients and customers. One of the great things about the internet is the wide, global reach it has. While the goal of some businesses is to take advantage of this wide reach, it’s not always what all business owners are looking for.
A Dentist in Massachusetts for example, would probably not be able to provide service to someone searching for a dentist in California (referrals aside of course!). This dentist is looking for patients that are local to his business. In order to gain qualified leads and potential patients for this dentists, MitzClix implements special tactics in search engine optimization to funnel local searchers to his business website.
Go ahead and run a search on Google for “Pizza in <your town>, <your state>“. Chances are, you’ll see something similar to the screenshot below. These are Google maps local listings, and they are pure gold for your business. More people click on these listings than on the traditional search results, and yet many SEO firms still consider them an afterthought.
MitzClix understand the importance of Google maps’ local business results, and has proprietary methods of making improving the odds that your business will appear here for keywords related to your business and your business’ location!