Search Engine Basics
In today’s digital world, all businesses need an online presence in order to thrive. To have full control over your online presence you will need a website for your business. Your website will then be indexed (checked over by search engines) along with the other millions of websites on the internet. To make sure your website is working well for your business, you will need to understand the basics of search engine optimisation, or SEO.
There's a lot of misunderstanding around SEO being incredibly techy, indecipherable, having a difficult algorithm and needing lots of money and time to be beneficial. But that actually isn’t the case! By focussing on the experience of the users of our website we can massively improve our SEO and start getting super visible and super discoverable online. That’s right! SEO, like most marketing practices, is actually all about understanding human beings and making great experiences for them.
So, what even is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Lets break down what this means.
A search engine is a website like Google or Bing that takes internet users search queries and delivers them relevant websites that will answer their questions. SEO is all about making sure your website works as well as possible for these websites. Search engines use complex algorithms to determine the relevance and quality of your website, this allows them to rank your website in search results, and make sure you are visible online and the right customers can find you.
While it can sound overwhelming with lots of terms like 'Keywords’ and ‘meta data', SEO is actually all about best practices online, and making your website as user friendly as possible.
Believe it or not, you and Google want the same thing.
Google wants to give the best website suggestions to their users, and you want users who are actively looking for your services or products. SEO is just about helping Google, so that Google can help your business.
When someone uses a search engine, they will type a query into a search box, something like ‘DIY Squarespace templates’ for example. Search engines will then use a complex algorithm to analyse their data on all the sites online and return the most relevant results. SEO focuses on aligning with search engine guidelines to improve the chances of your website appearing prominently in the search results for your specified industry, location or niche.
Here at Lucky Night Studio, we like to make things more user-focused, so we break down SEO into three categories: Market Research, Accessibility and Authority.
Market Research
In order to help your customers, you need to know exactly who they are. Market research helps you understand the struggles & motivations of your customer so you can make sure you can provide a service to help them, and give them a way to easily find your business.
Things to learn about your audience include:
Gender
Age range
Preferred social platform
How much money do they like to spend
Where do they like to spend their money
Knowing all of these things will help you to create a website that provides a useful and beneficial experience to your customers.
It’s also a good idea to get to know some of your competitors. What are they doing well? What resonates with their audiences?
Look to research people providing a similar service to you, and those who may provide something different but to the same kinds of customers. These are great ways of ensuring your content hits the mark.
Accessibility
Accessibility is about ensuring your site is usable by as many people as possible and making the information on your website, clear and easy to grasp for all users.
How to improve your accessibility:
Well structured pages: make sure all your pages have clear Headings on your website for the most important/key information
Provide alt text for your images: Alt text on an image is text which is hidden alongside the image in code. This helps for screen readers (visual impermeant), image searching from website like Google, and telling search engines what the content is. For alt text, you just want to provide a clear description about what the image contains. For example: ‘Woman reading a book on a beach’
Clear and Descriptive Links: Use descriptive text for your links that clearly conveys the destination or purpose of the link. Avoid using generic phrases like "click here" or "read more" , instead try: ‘Read more about our services’ or ‘Download Portfolio PDF now’.
Color Contrast and Readability: Use sufficient colour contrast between text and background to make the content readable. A good rule of thumb, is dark background, light text and light background dark text. Additionally, consider using clear typography, appropriate font sizes, and spacing to enhance readability.
Mobile-Friendly Design: Optimize your website for mobile devices, ensuring that it still looks good on mobile, loads quickly, all the links are big enough to be clicked, even with big thumbs!
Authority
Authority is how legitimate & trustworthy your website appears to search engines, other websites and your users. This authority is driven from you providing what you say you will provide. So if your blog title says 10 top tips for new photographers, make sure that is what is on the page, not a link to a photography course. Its also helpful to be known and active in your community/industry. The aim of building authority, is so that search engines are happy to ‘recommend’ your business.
How to improve your Authority:
Sharing your knowledge through blogs on your website. This can be industry news, product updates, tips and tricks - this gives Google and your users more information about your business and will hopefully help your users. This doesn't just have to be on your own website, but can be on other established business websites too. Guest blogging is a fantastic way of improving your authority and visibility online. (Also known as backlinks to your website)
Testimonials or reviews from existing customers is a great way to build trust with new users, especially useful if the review is from a third party like ‘Google reviews’, or ‘Trust pilot’ for example, this is another ‘backlink’ from a trusted source, and users feel they can trust the review more as you are unable to edit these third party reviews
Helping and answering questions on forums within your industry. Not only does this help your community, but another backlink and a great way to show off your knowledge and skills to others
Consistency: Create a consistent brand across all digital touchpoints. Make sure your name, visuals, tone of voice and mission are clear and consistent everywhere and anywhere that search engines can find you.
Before we wrap up this post we want to highlight this key point:
Search engines want your site to work effectively and reliably for as many people as possible!
By prioritising an inclusive experience for humans, you will greatly improve the online visibility of your website.
Hopefully now you’re clearer on what SEO is, and that it isn’t as scary or as techy as many make out!
By making use of these tools and getting to know your audience, you can massively improve the visibility of your website and get your business in front of more dream customers than ever!
