Do you have a small-medium sized business in Fort Collins or the Northern Colorado area? While many of you may have heard about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), are you still a little confused on what exactly that means? And once you know what exactly SEO entails… what then? Throughout this Fort Collins SEO blog post, we will detail the three key types of SEO, along with the steps you should take to enhance your company’s presence in the online community.
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What is SEO?
To begin, for those of you who don’t know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This essentially describes how well your content is optimized to rank in various search engines or on search engine results pages (SERPs). Typically, SEO is more specifically concerned with how your website, article, blog, or video ranks on Google, as this is the largest search engine. The second largest search engine is YouTube, which Google recently bought. This goes to show just how much power Google holds as far as your online success is concerned. All in all, Google is bigger than Ask, Yahoo, and Bing combined!
On-Page SEO
Now that you are aware of what SEO is, it is important to understand the three different types of SEO. First and foremost is On-Page SEO. In the simplest terms, this refers to how well your content is optimized on-page. And how can you enhance your on-page optimization? You may have heard the phrase, “Content is King”… well this stands to be true with SEO. Your success with on-page optimization is dependent on the quality of your content. Ultimately, Google wants to provide the best user experience possible, and will rank your content accordingly. For example, if you search Google for “Fort Collins SEO”, Google wants you to find something that provides you with good value. Whether it is a website, video, or blog post, Google wants you to easily find a search result that will answer your inquiry, rather than feel the need to keep searching. One way to enhance your rankings is to increase the length of your content. For instance, instead of simply posting a video to your website, provide a description of that video as well. Typically, 500 plus words is a good place to start for a video description, however for a blog post, 800 to 1,200 words is more appropriate.
Keyword Density and Consistency
Another important aspect as far as your content goes is keyword density. This describes how many keywords you use in relation to the rest of your text. It is recommended that you try to have roughly one percent keyword density, i.e. around one percent of your text is keywords compared to the rest of the content. This is crucial because if you overload your content with keywords hoping to get ahead in the rankings, Google will notice and will penalize you for it.
In addition to the length of your content and number of relevant keywords, the consistency of your content is crucial! For example, just because you write one quality blog post that is the ideal length with the right number of keywords, does not mean that it will automatically help your on-page optimization. It is important for you to publish consistent content. Google wants to see some type of human interaction to ensure that there is a real person behind a website, so make sure that you update your blogs, videos, and webpage on a regular basis. These tips will help you get on the first page of Google, which is where you want to be!
Off Page Optimization
The second type of SEO is Off-Page Optimization, or back linking, which is essentially a vote to your website from another site. For instance, if someone likes this blog post about Fort Collins SEO and shares it to their Facebook page encouraging people to read it, that is a backlink. Another way to create backlinks is by commenting on other people’s videos, posts, and content. It is Very important however that you are careful with this because not just any backlink is good. Spamming can actually hurt you rather than help your business. Black-hat techniques like this can get your website banned from Google indefinitely, so be sure to practice strictly white-hat tricks.
Lastly, Social Media Signals is another form of SEO that is vital to the success of any business online. This kind of SEO pertains to likes, comments, shares, re-pins, etc., on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. Google+ is especially important to your company’s optimization as it is rapidly on the up and up in the online marketing world. Receiving social signals will increase your rankings because it is another way to show Google that you are relevant and that people like your content.