Do you own a website – be it for personal or business purposes? Are you wondering why you’re not attracting organic traffic from search engines? That’s where search-engine optimization comes in. Search-engine optimization is one tool among many responsible for increasing traffic to your website. Other techniques include search-engine marketing (online advertising), on-site webpage optimization, through social media and through conventional print marketing. In today’s blog, we focus on SEO.

How does search-engine optimization work?

Search-engines – such as Google and Bing – organize their search results in an order. However, this order is not random. There are reasons why some websites appear higher in search results than other websites. For example, if you search for “California law firms”, some law firms appear higher in search results than others. Some law firms, even though they have a website, don’t even appear in these search results. Why is this? More pressingly, what can you do to place your website higher in search rank results?

What is SEO?

Search-engine optimization, or SEO, is the field of study concerned with those web factors that increase your search rank on Google.

There are tens and tens of factors that influence SEO. As the Internet changes, SEO factors change too. SEO factors considered essential 10 years ago are not considered essential today. Similarly, there were SEO factors considered inconsequential 5 years ago that are now considered essential. SEO is, then, a fluid subject. It’s something that, unless you stay on top of things, your website or business can quickly lose traffic to competitors who are staying ahead of the game. In digital marketing, you must always stay vigilant.

At Fusionvegas, our Las Vegas web design team incorporate these SEO factors into each design. It’s not enough to have quality content (though that is important) on your website. Web design and consequent programming must be modern; the design must optimize for images as well as content. The design must also be mobile responsive; an essential SEO factor in 2017. Keeping on top of every SEO factor can be challenging. That being said, for your business to succeed, it must stay on top of the very latest SEO.

So, what other factors influence SEO?

We mentioned quality content above. This is an exceptionally important ranking factor. If you think about it, this makes sense. Google orders its websites in accordance to the value each website offers to users. Google wants to order website rankings in order of authority and relevance. One way of proving to search algorithms that your website has “authority” and “relevance” is to produce quality content that users want. It’s not enough to produce content. The content must be original and, most importantly, have value.

Web design, content, originality…just some of the SEO metrics you should consider.

What other factors should we consider?

• Keyword research – Relevance, use and variation
• Site architecture – Is there duplicate content? Does the website load slowly? Is there a secure connection? How do webpages appear on both Android and iPhone devices?
• Content – How much content is on the website? Is the current content keyword optimized? Is new content published regularly?
• Technicalities – How are webpages titled? Do they contain images and are these images named, alt tagged and optimized? Does each webpage have a keyword-filled meta description?

The above factors are by no means exhaustive. There are many other SEO factors we could consider. These four factors – keyword use, site architecture, content and other HTML technicalities – are known as “on-page” SEO factors. But that isn’t the end of the story. We also have “off-page” SEO factors. Off-page search-engine optimization factors include but are not limited to:

• Trust – does your website have trust and authority? Has the domain been around for a long time? Are there too many ads on webpages? What percentage of visitors leave the website soon after entering (known as ‘bounce rate’)?
• Links – Does your website have quality, authoritative links pointing to it? Are these links produced regularly? Did you purchase bad links? How many spam links point to your website?
• Social Media –Are you present on social media? Do you post regularly and do you have much engagement? How many hits do you receive from posting content on social media?

So together, these two factors – “on-page” and “off-page” – contribute toward the overall SEO value of your website.

If your business is within a competitive niche, with high-competition keywords and with much local competition, it can be challenging to rank your website. Statistics show that, on average, it takes between 3-6 months to rank a new website – and these statistics assume average competition. It can take as much as a year (and more) to rank a new website with very high competition. That is why SEO is so important. It helps you build reputation, authority and – in the eyes of search engines – value. It’s this value that increases your search rank for the keywords your business targets.

Conclusion

So, to answer the question – what is search-engine optimization? – we need to think about the factors that influence where and why your website appears in search engine results in the way that it does.

At Fusionvegas, our Las Vegas web design team incorporate the very latest SEO elements into each design. SEO is a long-term approach; there is no short-term solution. That is why we only offer 3-6 month SEO campaigns that target each of the above SEO factors – helping local business throughout the city attract the traffic and leads they need. If you’d like to learn more about how our service can help you, contact a member of our Las Vegas web development team today.