SEO basics are the foundation that determines how “discoverable” online content is. That is, how likely it is for someone to find your website through the use of search engines (primarily Google).
Over the years, I’ve written and re-written several articles similar to this one for all kinds of different websites. From reitrement agency sites, to ecommerce ones selling baby sleeping bags, to review sites focusing on WordPress templates. It’s a topic everyone is interested in.
The reason for the broad popularity of this subject is because it remains one of the most effective techniques for growing traffic and improving engagement metrics on websites of every kind. Most successful websites have some sort of a Content Marketing strategy optimized for search engines (SEO!).
If you’re not sure about all of this, that’s understandable. I get it. Like everything, there’s jargon and acronyms to make it sound more complicated and important than it really is. However, once you internalize SEO basics, it’ll be a lot easier than you think.
So, please don’t worry. Let’s start from the beginning…
A Content Marketing Strategy Is a Plan to Use Blog and Social Media Content to Find Customers
At its core, that’s all a content marketing strategy is, a formal plan put in place by a business or website owner to write and publish blog posts about topics and information that are interesting to your target audience. In this way, you attract potential customers to your website where, if all goes well, your website converts some of this newfound traffic into paying customers.
Okay, wait a minute, what’s a target audience? Your target audience is a generalized type of person that might be interested in what your website has to offer.
For instance, MK Editing’s target audience tends to be indie authors, writers, editors, and NaNoWriMo participants. Although we are attempting to expand our reach, we currently have deep ties with the indie romance-writing community.
Nevertheless, this is only a very general definition of MK Editing’s target audience. As the company evolves, we will be better able to identify niche groups in which our services are the perfect fit. And doing so provides us with opportunities to grow the business, adjusting our content marketing strategy to produce content that better translates into sales.
Your target audience can be based on a number of factors, including demographics, age, social media preferences, and so on. What works best for your site and company depends on the kind of product, service, or whatever else your website is trying to do.
Content can then be shared on social platforms, spreading the word, establishing your brand, and building a community of collegues and potential customers that, when managed correctly, can be an invaluable resource.
SEO Stands for Search Engine Optimization
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s talk about SEO. What is SEO?
Well, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a technique that involves designing your content with search engine algorithms in mind (a Google search). That is, to strategically insert keywords into your content, use an appropriate number of well-written headlines, images, links, an effect meta description, etc.
Honestly, it’s a lot, and it’s why SEO specialists are in demand. However, it comes down to a few simple things that everyone can do, if they know what to look for…
Which is what I will cover in next week’s blog post, an SEO Checklist of optimizations that everyone can employ.