Using a quality premium theme for WordPress goes a long way to making a brick and mortar business or an online-only one appear credible and trustworthy. Web hosting is also important because it affects the speed that the website loads in a web browser; well-funded businesses can pay for faster hosting, which delivers a quicker response when clicking between pages on a site. Then there’s search engine optimization, where both on-page and off-page links and the impressiveness (or lack thereof) of sites linking to it affects how and what search terms that a site ranks for.
Let’s now look at SEO and why it is important, along with different aspects connected to that.
Why SEO Matters
People are often confused and ask, “what is SEO?” That’s a fair question. Behind this question is another one, “Why does SEO matter?
SEO is the practice of helping a website achieve better rankings for targeted search queries in Google, Bing, and other search engines. The idea is if a top three or top five ranking is achieved for a given search term, this will deliver free organic traffic to a page on the site. Depending on what is covered on that page, it could result in a product sale or an ad click. Therefore, SEO helps sites to rank higher to drive traffic and ultimately create additional revenue for the website owner(s).
On-page SEO
On-page SEO is one part of SEO. How the page is laid out and what keywords are included on a page matter. When not including targeted search terms on a page, it is less likely that search engines will consider ranking the page for that search term. On the flip side, including the same search terms multiple times risks being seen as keyword stuffing, which can incur a penalty for trying to manipulate search results. Therefore, a balance has to be achieved.
Many times, a page will rank for many more related terms than were included in the page’s copy because Google and Bing will use their algorithms to determine what search terms are most appropriate.
Another aspect of on-page SEO is interlinking between pages. This helps tie different pages together and make navigation more logical through the site. Also, it tends to increase the average duration of visits, which is a ranking signal for Google.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is about obtaining links that point to the website; both the root domain and inner pages. It is a little like a popularity contest because when respected sites link to another website, it benefits from an elevation of trust in the eyes of Google. Equally, when a low-quality website links to the site, it doesn’t help it much and can hurt its future ranking position for the search terms it is targeting.
Though hard to get, quality links make a huge difference on ranking positions in Google and is worth the investment of time to develop relationships with other websites (or businesses) to obtain these kinds of links.
SEO is the magic sauce that takes a little-known website and transforms it into one that ranks well enough that people start to notice it and visit. From there, a positive compounding effect often happens where growth in traffic and earnings increases exponentially at a certain point.