Even marketing professionals have a difficult time keeping up with best SEO practices, so it’s not unusual for most business owners to feel completely lost.
That doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel. There are too many benefits of SEO to ignore.
There are also some basic SEO practices that even the biggest SEO neophyte can handle.
Don’t panic. Start reading to learn five SEO basics to start reaping the benefits of SEO.
1. The Use of Photos and Videos
No one wants to visit a website and be met with big blocks of text. Pure content is for books, not for websites.
This is why 55% of people using the internet are already watching videos online every day. By 2019 80% of global consumer traffic will be entirely for watching videos.
The use of video is only going to continue to rise, including live video.
The end is nowhere in sight.
With the increased use of smartphones, creating a video to place on a website is easier than ever.
There are plenty of videos an e-commerce site can use that will benefit, entertain, and inform their customers. This includes live video chats to answer frequently asked questions.
Photos are also important. A photo can show a consumer exactly what a product or service looks like.
For a cooking blog, it can show the beginning, middle, and end of a meal.
Best of all, if someone isn’t exactly the Annie Leibovitz of photography, there’s plenty of stock photos available for sale online.
2. Include Internal and External Links
Utilizing links is one of the many benefits of SEO. Internal links can help promote parts of a site that don’t get much traffic.
The links can also help promote and build trust on an e-commerce site. It’s also free and easy to do.
External links are equally important.
Linking to another reputable company can not only help with SEO rankings by search engines, it’s also a way to be part of an online community that helps one another.
Beyond that, when a company places external links to another company, they are not only building up more trust but also positioning themselves as an authority figure.
The benefits of SEO are lost, however, with the use of bad and broken links.
Bad links are when a company links to a site that is too spammy or may cause malware to be placed on a user’s computer.
Broken links are when a consumer reaches a 404 message rather than the intended website. Usually, it means the page is no longer available.
Unfortunately, keeping those links up will end up with search engines penalizing the company who features them.
Check every six months to a year to make sure that all links are current.
3. Making the Most Out of Social Media
One of the best benefits of SEO is using social media to help sell and promote products, services, and blogs.
Facebook currently boasts 2 billion active users to their site each month.
It’s also an easy and inexpensive way to get an e-commerce site out in front of the right audience. Using social media is an easy way to find the consumers for the product’s age range, interests, and even geographical location.
But it doesn’t end there.
While many people think that they’ll have to spend a lot of time on social media, that’s simply not the case. With the right campaign, all you need to do is create the content and posts, then schedule the times when they should be sent out automatically.
4. Keywords are One of the Benefits of SEO
While it may seem daunting to find the right keywords to place on a website, it’s worth taking the time to do so. Keywords are one of the best benefits of SEO.
Check to see which keywords the competition is using. It’s smart to find words they aren’t using to ensure a higher ranking on search engines.
The key people to have in mind are the consumers. In order to find the consumers, it’s necessary to think like them and use the words and phrases that they’re most likely to use when searching for a product or service.
While “unicorn” keywords might sound like a great idea, they’re not.
Using the words, “chocolate cake” might attract consumers looking to bake a cake or it might attract consumers wanting to eat chocolate cake.
It’s important to be really clear about which words and phrases are most likely to bring people to your site for the right reasons.
5. Providing Great Content on a Consistent Basis
Great content will never go out of style. It should be easy to read, interesting, and informative.
Write too much and people lose interest. Write too little and they’re left with questions.
Great content is about being consistent. The same website with the same content gets boring.
Most people won’t bother coming back.
New content should be provided at a minimum of once per month. Otherwise, most consumers will forget about the site and go somewhere else.
The better it is, the more likely that people will want to share that content. Don’t forget that content can include photos, videos, and the written word filled with plenty of the right keywords and phrases.
Fresh content is also one of the best benefits of SEO.
Search engines reward sites that update their content.
Several ways to get new content out to the masses is by collecting e-mail addresses and through social media.
Both methods are easy for anyone to set up and to maintain.
Social media buttons should be placed on your website so that consumers who go directly there can easily share their favorite bits of content.
Keep Learning
The benefits of SEO are endless if they’re done the right way and maintained correctly. That’s why it’s so important to keep learning.
We’re here to help businesses make the most out of their e-commerce sites so keep coming back to read our latest news.