Today we’re going back in time – to your high school English class. You know, the one where you had a vocabulary test every week.
Week-in and week-out, new words would get added to the test. You’d constantly have to study and learn how to use a new word in a sentence.
But then, out of the blue, an old word would get thrown in. It’s a foundational word that you’ve got to know.
Instead of old English or SAT words, though, today’s vocabulary test is about internet slang. And the old, foundational word?
SEO.
Buckle in – it’s lesson time.
A Short History
Popping onto the scene in the mid-1990s, SEO is short for “search engine optimization”. SEO is the practice of intentionally improving the ranking on search engines, like Google or Yahoo! And since clicks are king, the higher the ranking, the better a website will do.
SEO is a long-term marketing strategy focusing on improving a website’s visibility and organic search results. And just like Shakespeare didn’t write Hamlet in a day, an SEO strategy will take a while to implement. But, trust us, the results will be worth it:
- a responsive, information-hungry audience
- higher traffic flows from common searches
- a stronger connection between your content and your industry
Different SEO techniques are common in the industry, including keyword research, backlinking, and on-page optimization.
Keyword Research
Quick – when you think of your business, products, or services, what are the first three words that come to mind?
When it comes to keyword research, the goal is to identify the relevant keywords that potential customers will use when searching for products or services related to your business. These keywords are then incorporated into your website’s content to become more relevant to these searches.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and pretend you have never heard of your own company. How would you find yourself? And how can you make it easier to find yourself?
Backlinking
Backlinking is slightly confusing at first glance but quickly makes sense. In short, backlinks are inbound links to a web page.
Imagine you recommended a book to your best friend. Because your friend trusts you, they trust your book recommendation. They enjoy it and recommend it to their friends. Next thing we know, the book is highly thought of by a variety of reputable people.
This is, in short, how backlinking works – only the book is the backlinked page. The more backlinks a webpage has, the more reputable the webpage. And the more reputable the webpage, the higher its search engine ranking.
On-Page Optimization
Do you remember learning about the library catalog in your high school library? You could search for a book by its title, author, publisher, or almost any other type of information. Put simply, on-page optimization is the Dewey Decimal system of the internet.
(Yes, we went there.)
On-page optimization involves optimizing the web page’s title, meta tags, header tags, images, and other elements to be more visible to search engines. The stronger the match between this information and a search term, the higher the webpage’s ranking.
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Hey, you just got a 100% on your weekly vocab quiz. Proud of you.
SEO is simply making your content as easy to find, as consistently as possible. It’s complex, yes, and might take some time to see results, but it’s a powerful marketing tool for your long-term business goals.
(Oh – and by the way – we keep SEO in mind when making all of our custom-made, customer-focused animation videos. Wanna learn more?)
