SEO Decoded

The term gets thrown around a lot, but what does it actually mean? Many business owners “think” they understand SEO, but its only about 1/3rd of what it all entails.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Which means, you are optimizing your website to be favorable to the search engines. In turn, your website will be locatable when your customers are looking for your product or service. You are appeasing the search engine gods. Optimizing your website comes in 2 different flavors:

• "Onpage” SEO

• “Offpage” SEO

We will break each one of these SEO categories down as there is much to be learned below the surface.

Onpage SEO

This is the common misconception about SEO as a whole. Most business owners think that throwing up a few paragraphs and some nice pictures on a website will fulfill the SEO requirement to be found online. Painfully wrong.

The way I like to put it, you can build a fantastic ship but if its at the bottom of the ocean nobody will find it. Or better yet, you build a beautiful ship and it sits at a desolate dock on a desolate island where nobody can see it, let alone find it.

What you need to do is build a road off of the main highways (Google & others), add a few billboards along the way, maybe some flashing arrow signs, and then people can find your fancy business website. But how do you accomplish that?

Onpage SEO is the physical content you have on your website. Keyword-heavy written content is one primary example. Others are:

• Geotagged images for local search results

• Alt text or image descriptions

• Image compression or downsizing for faster load speeds

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• NAP info (Name Address Phone)

• Over 1500 words on main home page

• Interlinking between pages

So back to the original question, how do you do onpage SEO? You can hire us :) or you can take a course in SEO and take on the responsibility yourself. It is quite a large undertaking and can get quite complex, but once you do it a few times you start to get the hang of it.

Offpage SEO

Offpage SEO can get a little more technical. But in a nutshell, offpage SEO is other websites pointing to your website. We call these backlinks. Other websites on the internet linking back to your website. Some key things to remember with offpage search engine optimization:

• Anchor text (what keywords are embedded in the hyperlink itself)

  • For example: Offpage SEO “Offpage SEO” is the anchor text and the backlink points to the homepage of my website.

• Quality of links

  • You don’t just want any old site to point to yours, its best to have niche-related sites to get the best bang for your buck

  • SPAM or low quality sites can actually hurt your score in the grand scheme of things

• Type of link

  • Is the link just among hundreds of others, like a “link farm”?

  • Is the link embedded in a blog post about your business or industry?

• Location of backlink

  • Is the link at the top of the page in the content?

  • Is the link at the bottom of the page?

All of these aspects will determine the quality for the crawlers, and its best to optimize every where you can. The traditional “blog comment” backlinks are not as valuable as traditionally they get flagged or deleted rather quickly and aren’t really considered permanent.

The anchor text is very important as that is what will tell the search engines what your website should be known for. Like if you have a website about gardening and all of your links have keywords related to masonry work, Google will be confused and you won’t rank for the terms that you want to. Having an analytics tool such as Ahrefs is recommended as this will ensure you are optimizing your website properly.

Types of businesses that benefit from Onpage & Offpage SEO:

Home Remodeling Companies

Roofing Companies

Concrete Contractors

Supplement Stores (e-commerce)

General Contractors

Security Companies

Hobby stores

and many more!

Onpage and Offpage SEO

Combining both of these techniques as a whole will skyrocket your website to the top. Having high-quality backlinks that are done consistently every single week is your best bet to get (and stay) on top of the search engine results.

Organic SEO is King

Pay Per Click is great, but once you turn off the hose the traffic stops. SEO is permanent. Once you do it, it’ll always be there. While you may have to update and continue to backlink and optimize/update your site, it is worth it. You can dominate even over the paid advertisers online in today’s market. Not many people are willing to invest in high-quality organic SEO. Everybody wants the “quick fix” which is PPC. Don’t be like everybody else if you want to win the traffic game, invest in SEO for your digital properties.

To learn more, visit NationwideAutomation.com. We have turn-key SEO packages ready to purchase to take the burden off your shoulders. while we do the heavy lifting.