Optimizing your web assets for search isn’t a new concept; most businesses that have been around for that long have utilized SEO tactics for decades. Yet, even though SEO has been a critical digital marketing strategy for ages, many business leaders continue to misunderstand how SEO works, let alone how they could be doing SEO better.
If you can’t describe SEO with certainty, you aren’t alone. In truth, you don’t really have to understand SEO if you have an experienced and knowledgeable digital marketing team in your corner. Still, most business leaders like to know a bit about their business tactics, so here are a few things you probably still don’t know about SEO.
Bigger Can Be Better
Most often, digital marketers focus on making individual pages as optimized as possible. This is because your entire website doesn’t rank on Google; discrete pages do, so it behooves you to focus on making important pages as good as they can be. Often, this leads businesses to create relatively compact websites with a small number of exceedingly well-optimized pages.
However, website size also influences search results at times. Especially when it comes to popular search terms, larger sites gain precedence because they ostensibly offer more content to searchers. Thus, if you are fighting for space with basic keyword phrases, like “women’s jeans” or “home warranty,” you might consider investing in building a gargantuan website.
Mobile Matters
You know how annoying it is to use a website that isn’t formatted for mobile when you are on a phone or tablet. You probably navigate away as quickly as possible. That’s exactly how your website visitors feel if you haven’t optimized your website for mobile use, and Google is penalizing you for it. Many website builders, like Squarespace and Wix, give you automatic mobile-friendliness, but if you custom-designed your site, you need to find someone to help you create a dynamic design for mobile use.
Seasonal Change Is Good
Most consumers operate on a seasonal buying schedule for most types of goods. For example, pool toys don’t often fly off the shelves in November, and candy canes aren’t a popular treat in April. It’s often a good idea to alter your SEO strategy as the seasons change to attract different kinds of buyers when they are primed and ready to convert. However, because a seasonal SEO strategy is ever-changing, you should seek professional help from an experienced digital marketing team to ensure you pull it off.
Bad SEO Is Always Bad
As tempting as it might be to stuff webpages with keywords, duplicate content around your site, purchase links and generally participate in shady SEO practices, you should resist the urge. Google has long been wise to these attempts to “hack” their algorithm, and they severely punish any website they find in violation of their SEO terms. Black-hat SEO will earn you penalties like dropping in rankings or even elimination from search results altogether. If you have any bad SEO on your site, you should fix it ASAP.
Early Adoption Is Key
Google is coming out with cool, new tech on a frequent basis, and websites that adopt that cool, new tech are rewarded handsomely. Often, Google’s new services appear at the top of the SERP, so users can view, experiment and take full advantage of the new offering. Thus, if you adopt the new tech early, you stand to benefit from an exceedingly high ranking right out of the gate. You should stay poised to adopt any new tech that Google drops, especially if it can get you high on the SERPs in doing so.
Google Isn’t the Only Search Engine
Google fields more than 3.5 billion searches per day, which is about 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. Google has become like “Kleenex” and “Xerox,” replacing the brand for the verb “to search online.” Even so, Google isn’t the only search engine on the web. In fact, a significant portion of your audience might prefer a different search engine, like Bing or DuckDuckGo, so optimizing for those search algorithms might be a better use of your time.
The more you know about SEO, the better your chances of ranking highly on Google or any other engine’s SERPs. You should continue to learn SEO tips and tricks, especially as search engines grow and change, so you can enjoy the best possible rankings on your pages and site.
Catalyst For Business and contributor to search giants like Yahoo Finance, MSN. He is passionate about covering topics like big data, business intelligence, startups & entrepreneurship. Follow him on twitter: @ryankhgb.
SEO stock photo by StevanZZ/Shutterstock
