SEO and all its related jargon may have popped up on your radar a few times as you start your business and build your website.
If you’re unsure about what SEO means for you or are wondering whether you need it, you wouldn’t be the first.
We’ve put together a few SEO terms to help small businesses get to grips with the world of SEO so they can boost their marketing efforts online.
SEO
First of all, we’ll start off with SEO itself. Search Engine Optimisation is the process of ensuring a website is accessible through search engines and improves the chance it will be indexed and ranked favourably in results. In other words, it gets your website found by the people you want to target.
Think of search engines like big, automated recommendation tools. They will recommend websites that are most relevant depending on what keywords a user has typed into the search box.
Most people will only click on the links that appear near the top of the first SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Therefore, the closer you can get to the top the more chance you have for people to visit your website and buy from you.
PPC
On the other end of digital marketing spectrum, there is Pay Per Click (PPC). This is where you pay for adverts to ensure your website turns up high in the search engines rankings. With PPC, advertisers (you) pay every time someone clicks on their advert.
Paid ads are the top results you see when you search for anything online and are separated from the rest of the results.
It can give your website a good boost if you’ve got the cash to invest. However, it can end up pricey and doesn’t give you long lasting results once you stop.
Keywords
These are words or phrases that people type into search engines. In order to turn up in their search results, your website needs to feature these keywords throughout its content.
However, it’s not that simple. First of all, stuffing keywords into every corner of your website in a non-organic way will look like an obvious attempt to trick the search engines. They will penalise you for it.
Secondly, keywords are competitive. If you’re selling used cars, trying to rank for “used cars” will be difficult. Thousands of other businesses are trying to do the same around the world, many who have been around longer than you.
A more attainable target would be to rank for “used cars in (whatever city you’re based in)” or “used (brand) cars”. These will be more closely related to what people want and what they’ll search for.
Algorithms
Algorithms are programs used by search engines to determine which pages to suggest to searchers. Algorithms are updating all the time, which is why having a dedicated SEO expert on board is helpful so that you’re always keeping on top of the latest changes.
Analytics
Analytics help by gathering and analysing data about website usage. This lets you determine what parts of your site are popular and which are in need of improvement. Regularly consulting analytics means you can keep your website relevant and useful for visitors.
Bounce rate
This refers to the rate in which people leave your website as soon as coming onto it. A high bounce rate usually means that people aren’t finding what they want. There could be a number of reasons for this, from poor navigation and bad layout to long blocks of text or slow loading websites. Monitor your bounce rate through analytics and think of ways to improve visitor experience.
Backlinks
A backlink refers to any link from one website to another. The more links you have from quality trusted websites to your website, the more authority you have in the eyes of the search engines. A popular way to gather backlinks is to guest blog on other websites.
Indexed pages
Search engines have databases full of web pages and all their content to refer to for search results. Your website will need to be added to these indexes in order for it to turn up in the results. This may take some time as Google bots crawl and index each page of your website and feed it back to Google databases.
Hopefully, this gives you a good introduction into SEO jargon and makes the whole thing feel a bit less daunting. If you’d like some help with SEO and a free website review, get in touch.
Are there any other terms you’d add to the list? Pop a comment below and let us know your thoughts.
