What is SEO and Why Should You Care?

If you have a website, you want to land on that coveted first page of search results.

But what do you have to do to make that happen?

Good question!

What is SEO?

As one local radio ad here in Rhode Island puts it, it is "boosting your findability" on the internet.

For example, most of us open up Google and type in words and phrases into the search bar.

Once we hit "enter," we receive a list of recommended results.

The search engine does its best to provide the most valuable, relevant sites to the person who is searching.

Why is this important?

Search engines are not there to help you build your business. (Harsh, but true.)

Rather, search engines exist to serve users who want to find the best information quickly.

As with marketing in general, you want to keep your audience in mind. The same is true for SEO.

If you gear your website to your customers, and focus it on serving them and providing great resources and information, you'll increase your credibility with Google and you'll be treated more favorably in rankings.

Why E.A.T. matters for SEO (specifically, Google search)

Google uses three primary principles to evaluate websites for ranking. These principles can be summarized with acronym E.A.T. (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness).

• Expertise - Does the website show real experience and knowledge?

• Authority - Is the website credible?

• Trustworthiness - Is the content accurate and reliable?

Google wants to provide the most valuable and relevant information to its users to maintain its reputation as the best search engine.

They will do everything they can to manage results to give users the most direct route to the exact information they need.

In simplest terms, they want to provide a great user experience.

So if you want to rank, you've got to play by their rules and deliver a great user experience.

Things to keep in mind for your site

It's not necessary to spend big bucks on a site or bend over backwards to please the SEO algorithms. BTW, Google works to balance out the ranking results so that small and medium-sized companies don't get lost in the shuffle.

While there are a ton of things you can do, I don't want to overwhelm you, so I'll keep it down to a dull roar.

Here are three recommendations:

• Keep your site simple and easy to navigate. This benefits both human users and the search engine crawlers, which don't like complexity. Make sure that visitors get to the right info in 3 clicks or less. Get those image and video files down in size so they load more easily and don't slow things down.

• Share helpful information and resources. What does your customer want or need to know? How can you provide good information to them? They may not buy right away, but if you can provide valuable content that helps visitors to your site, you'll be rewarded by better rankings. Add fresh resources and content regularly to keep your site fresh.

• Use phrases on your website that your customers will type into search boxes. Take some time and play around with variations on the phrases that a customer might use, and study the search results. Add those phrases in headers and subheaders where it makes sense. Look at how your competition is ranking for those phrases. But be careful. If Google thinks you are keyword-stuffing, they will ding you. Use common sense and be a good internet citizen.

If your site isn't ranking and you need some help, let me know.

I know several great SEO professionals and I'd be happy to refer you.