How does SEO really work? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization or as I like to call it: how do you get your site to rank better on Google? SEO is frustrating to small business owners because it can be so complicated. If you want to know the basics of how SEO and the process of optimizing your website design really works keep watching.
Hi, I'm Tom Malesic founder and President of EZMarketing and you're watching Ask EZ. This is where small business owners go to get real answers to their marketing questions.
How SEO Works
To understand how SEO works, you need to understand how search engines like Google work.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google is like a librarian for the world's biggest library. They examine every single page and learn what it's about. They organize all that information into a searchable index so that when you search for something it provides the best and most useful results.
Alright, if Google's job is to provide the best answers to people's questions, then SEO is all about convincing Google that your website has the best answer to those questions.
So how does SEO actually do that? This is usually where ranking factors, algorithms, and complicated jargon comes in that really makes your eyes glaze over. So instead — not going to do that —we're going to talk about some basic concepts for what search engines like Google are looking for.
What Search Engines Look FOr
RELEVANCE
One of the most critical factors is relevance! Does the web page contain the type of information that you're looking for?
An example would be is if you're searching for "accounting services." Google will show you pages that have those keywords as well as related keywords like "bookkeeping" or "payroll" or "CPA" in the text and the content of the page.
SEO works by making sure that you have the right keywords and content on your page that are relevant for your customers search queries.
QUALITY CONTENT
Another factor is quality content. So if you do a search and 10 million different web pages show up in the list, Google wants to prioritize the best sources and show you those first.
To determine the quality of your content Google looks at things like: how many other web pages linked to yours? How many people are actually visiting your site? And how long are they staying?
SEO works by creating high quality content that demonstrates your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
USABILITY
Another factor Google uses is usability. Imagine that you find the perfect book at the library only to open it and discover that half the pages are falling out and it's written in Swedish, which you don't speak. It's frustrating, right?
Google wants to make sure web pages are easy to use and don't frustrate people. The things they look at are: is it mobile-friendly? Does it load fast? And is it working correctly?
SEO works by optimizing your site structure, layout, and coding so that it provides a good user experience to the visitor.
LOCATION AND CONTEXT
And finally location and context. When you do a search, Google takes into account where YOU are and other personalized factors.
So an example is if you go to Google and you type in "Italian restaurants," you're going to get a different list of results if you're here in Lancaster than if you're in Philadelphia. Look you can't control where people search from but you can help Google understand and trust where your business is located.
SEO works by optimizing content, directories, and listings for local search.
IMPROVE YOUR SEO
Again SEO works by convincing the search engines that you have the best answers to the searcher's questions. You do this by providing relevant content, quality content, and easy to use website that's optimized for your local audience.
If you'd like to get more help with your SEO please click on the link below for your FREE SEO Audit, where we're going to scan your site and look for all the problems that it has. We'll give you a report with suggestions on how to fix it.
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