Optimized Websites

It is essential to have a website for your business. Of course, in 2022, you probably already know that you need a website. Most people spend hours per day online, meaning that you have a huge opportunity to connect with potential customers if you maintain an impressive digital presence.

However, did you know that it is not good enough to simply toss a website up on the internet and call it a day? Instead, you need to make sure your website is ‘optimized’ for maximum value and performance. Specifically, you want to have a website that has been optimized for search engine performance. This process is called, not surprisingly, search engine optimization – or SEO. In the world of SEO, the idea is to draw as much organic search traffic as possible by optimizing a website based on current best practices.

As a business owner, SEO is not something you can afford to overlook. Fortunately, you don’t have to learn the ins and outs of every aspect of optimization in order to improve your website. Market Igniter has an entire team committed to the process of SEO, and we would be happy to put them to work for the benefit of your business.

To help you gain a better understanding of some of the basics of SEO, we have assembled the following list of best practices. Please feel free to review this list, and contact Market Igniter when you are ready to get started!

Finding Valuable Keywords

The concept of keywords is at the heart of the SEO process. Keywords – which are phrases, in most cases – are the basis of all things search. When someone uses a search engine to look for a product, service, or anything else, the words they enter into the search bar are considered the ‘keywords’. In order to have your site discovered by your target market, you need to include relevant keywords in your site content.

An example will help to highlight how this works. Let’s imagine that you are a lawyer in Santa Fe, New Mexico. You have a website to promote your services, of course, but that website has very little content on it at the moment. In fact, it never even states the phrase ‘Santa Fe lawyer’ within the page content. Without those words, how are the search engines supposed to know what your site is all about? A big part of optimization is including the important keywords related to your business on the pages of your site. You want to give the search engines all the information they need to decide that you are a relevant search result for a query such as ‘lawyer in Santa Fe’. By covering as many keywords as possible, you will improve your chances of drawing plenty of free organic traffic.

Analyzing the Competition

Another important step in the SEO process is reviewing the presence your competition maintains on the web. You should already know who your competition is around town – you can probably recite their names off the top of your head. But do you know what their websites look like? Understanding what competitors are doing online can help you point your own site in the right direction.

Building Quality Links

When trying to determine how to rank the millions of sites across the web for search results, search engines use a long list of factors. One of those factors is backlinks. A backlink is simply a link somewhere on the web which is pointing to your site. These are seen as ‘votes of confidence, or signs that your site has information worth finding. Of course, not all backlinks are created equal, as receiving a link from a high-profile site is far more valuable than getting a link – or even 10 links – from a small site with no traffic. As part of the optimization process, you should be working to build a collection of backlinks that can help raise the profile of your site as a whole.

Addressing the Right Locations

Local search is a big part of the SEO process, especially for business owners who serve a specific market. If your company is focused on a local or regional area, you will want to make sure you are targeting the relevant locations with your pages and content. For example, if you were doing business in Denver but you served the entire area, you would also want to target names like Golden, Aurora, and others. That way, no matter what specific city in your region the potential customer happens to search for, your site will have a chance to appear.

Building a website for your business should be considered the start of your online marketing efforts, not the end. Invest in optimization by working with the talented team at Market Igniter and you will be on the road to growth. Thanks for visiting, and please contact us right away!