Millennium Magazine_9th Ed

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it is significant in today’s digital marketing world. If you own a company inmodern times, you should have a website. That being said, if you do not take time to optimize that website for search engines, then your site will not show up on search results. Youmay say that it is not important because you only sell locally. However, how are new local customers going to find you if you have no online presence? Overall, the point of SEO is to get listed at the top of search engine results for either the products you sell, your company name or your location. If you do not optimize your website, the likelihood of getting anywhere near the top of search results is slim. There are two types of SEO of which to be aware: on-page and off-page. Business owners do not need to become web experts. However, you should know enough about it that you can ask your web company if they are doing everything you are paying them to do. WHAT IS ON-PAGE SEO? On-page optimization consists of everything that is done to a web page to make it friendly for search engine bots. Search engines are constantly looking across the internet and scanning websites for various factors that determine how they will be placed on search results pages. Another term for these bots is “spiders.” They periodically visit and see if there have been any changes to your website from the last time you visited. Here are a few tips that can be done to optimize onpage SEO: 1. Clean up your site’s web code to remove extraneous code that may slow it down. 2. Streamline how individuals navigate through the site. 3. Optimize your site’s title tags and meta descriptions. 4. Add high quality and well-written content, not just boilerplate comments about your business. What is Off-Page SEO? Off-page optimization is not code or content that you write, but how your website is viewed by other sources. These can include social media links, testimonials on other sites for your busines, and reviews left on Google or Yelp pages, among other sources. If search engines such as Google see your website and a competitor as similar, the tiebreaker can often be which site is reflected better elsewhere. So, howcan youaffect your off-page SEO performance? 1. Have an active presence on social media. 2. Interact with reviewers and provide feedback to both positive and negative reviews. 3. Ask customers to review your products or offer a testimonial. 4. Have other reputable websites backlink to yours. SEO is not an exact science. Rather, it is an ongoing process that keeps your website active, relevant and easily viewed on all types of devices. If youmanage yourwebsite, take the time to learn about SEO and howyou can positively utilize it. If you have aweb company, ask themquestions about howthey aremanaging yourwebsite for SEO. After all, your business’ bottom line depends on it.

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