Search engine optimization 101

FreshySites’ ‘On-Page SEO’ process gives your website the foundational tools for high visibility and successful ranking for your target keywords, key phrases and/or locations.

This process involves incorporating your target keywords, key phrases and/or locations into the page title tags and meta descriptions on the back-end of your website. These tags are what search engines read on websites to better understand the content on that page and more accurately index it, thus serving it to the right searchers when needed.

These page title tags and meta descriptions are also optimized with the correct wording and structure for searchers according to SEO best practices and additional search engine tools.

One such tool is Google Keyword Planner, which allows users to view the monthly search volume on Google for certain keywords and key phrases.

Google, and other search engines, prioritize businesses, organizations, etc. that they have a lot of consistent information online for, particularly NAP (Name – Address – Phone Number) information. Google finds this digital information about your business or organization at critical websites with proper categorization and descriptions.

FreshySites’ ‘Local SEO’ process involves claiming and optimizing (or creating and optimizing) your Google My Business profile, which is a listing on Google that includes your business or organization name, address, phone number, hours, website and so forth.

We then use that verified, optimized listing to create additional listings, with accurate N-A-P information about your business, organization, etc., on verified aggregator and additional trusted websites. It takes roughly 4-6 weeks from submission date for these listings to go live online.

There could a variety of reasons your website isn’t ranking well for your chosen keywords, key phrases and/or target location.

It’s important to ensure your website is structured properly with clear and concise content – building your website with FreshySites is a guarantee than your website is structured properly because we build with a known search-engine-friendly platform called WordPress – and has the foundational on-page SEO tools implemented and running.

These are essential for a website to rank well on Google and other search engines.

We personally put timing at 18 months for a website to be ranked where it’s wanted to be. This isn’t an overnight process. It takes time and not only depends on how competitive a business or organization’s online industry space is, but also the implementation of a continuous and holistic digital marketing program on the part of the business.

At FreshySites, we always recommend continuous, holistic digital marketing efforts to increase your website’s visibility, including:

• Updating the content on your website with consistent blog posts.
• Creating basic social media profiles & continuously posting on various social media channels.
• Implementing email marketing with periodic blasts.
• Utilizing PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Google Ads.
• Ensuring your clients review your business or organizations on Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc.
• Having other businesses you’ve done work for, collaborated with on events, etc. give you a shout-out on their own website and provide an inbound link to your website and beyond.

Of these, the most important thing you can do to improve your ranking is update the content on your website with consistent blog posts.

When websites are first launched, and every time their content is updated, they are crawled by ‘search engine crawlers.’ Every time you post a blog to your website, that site is re-crawled, becomes more valuable for your target keywords or key phrases and thus, increasing its visibility over time.

There could a variety of reasons your website isn’t showing up on Google at all for your chosen keywords, key phrases and/or target location.

This could depend on how recently your website was launched — new websites can take up to 2 weeks to show up on Google — as well as how highly trafficked your website is.

You can always re-submit your website URL (just search ‘Add my website to Google’) if it’s been more than 2 weeks. However, this isn’t a guarantee that your website will show up.

There are a variety of things FreshySites can do for clients who want their website to rank better, including:

• Implementing on-page or local SEO (if those weren’t part of your original website scope)
• Re-auditing your website for a more refined list of targeted keywords
• Adding keyword-focused landing pages to your website and more.

Contact us so we can recommend the best path forward for your website.

After implementing on-page and local SEO tactics, it will take roughly 4-8 weeks for your website, and Google listing, to begin ranking well.

It depends on your business, organization, etc., as well as your overall SEO goals.

For example, if you’re not looking for your business to make a digital footprint in your local community — maybe your prospective clients are out of the region or country — on-page SEO would likely better achieve what you’re looking to do, if you just want your website optimized for your specific service keywords, rather than a set location.

That being said, our on-page and local SEO processes are both extremely valuable on their own, but are more effective when paired together to improve your website’s overall visibility and ranking online, as well as the credibility of your business or organization.

Google Analytics is a tool you can use to better understand how much activity is going on on your website and where that activity is happening. It also allows you to gauge who your visitors are, where they’re coming from, what pages of your website they’re visiting most, what actions they’re taking on your website and so forth.

The way Google can capture all this data is through a tracking code (also called a UA code) implemented on the back-end of your website.

To log into Google Analytics, you just need to go to analytics.google.com. Once you log in and get the hang of navigating it, you’ll be able to see all sorts of data and metrics about your website’s traffic.

As an overview, here are some of highlights and explanations for the most valuable data to look at for your website (and where to find these metrics, create reports, etc.):

General Traffic Overview – A high-level overview of your site’s audience for a given time period

• Go to the left-hand toolbar, then Audience then Overview

Landing Pages – The pages your visitors first enter on your site

• Go to the left-hand toolbar, then Behavior, then Site Content, then Landing Pages

Acquisition – Where your visitors are coming from (a search engine, social media, etc.)

• Go to the left-hand toolbar, then Acquisition, then Overview

Active Users – How many users are on your site in 7, 14 and 28-day periods

• Go to the left-hand toolbar, then Audience, then Active Users

Audience – How large your user pool is and where those users are located geographically

• Go to the left-hand toolbar, then Audience, then Geo, then Location

Behavior Flow – The pattern of behavior your users take on your site

• Go to the left-hand toolbar, then Behavior, then Behavior Flow

Pageviews – Which pages are being visited the most by visitors

• Go to the left-hand toolbar, then Behavior, then Site Content, then All Pages

Source/Medium Traffic – How many visitors are coming from which source (a search engine, direct URL, social media, etc.)

• Go to the left-hand toolbar, then Acquisition, then All Traffic, then Source/Medium

You can adjust the dates when viewing data for these different metrics by clicking into where the dates are shown in the upper right-hand corner.

You can also create reports for the data you’re viewing by clicking ‘Export,’ which is also in the upper right-hand corner, and will create a PDF of the screen you see when viewing the reports.