Far too many people assume that having a website means they’ll automatically appear in relevant search results. While this can happen, it usually takes a little extra work. Sometimes it takes a lot of extra work. This is especially true if you operate in a competitive industry and/or write about very mainstream/popular topics. The bigger your target audience is, the harder you’ll have to work to get your website in front of them.
This is where search engine optimization (SEO) is critical.
But My Website is Already Search Engine Friendly.
Having a website that is search engine friendly is critical, make no mistake. As you may or may not know, search engines have these web bots (pieces of software) that crawl the various pages of your website, document what’s there, and pull that information back into the search engine. This is called indexing.
If your website isn’t search engine friendly, these bots may not be able to crawl through your site. Or they might not be able to tell what it’s about. Or they might not see every page and post that they should be seeing.
What Makes a Site Search Engine Friendly?
Without getting too technical, a search engine friendly website is built on a foundation designed with search engine crawling in mind. From the way the pages connect to how the content is displayed on the pages to the very URLs the website generates, a search engine friendly site allows crawlers to move through it and understand everything that’s there. It also gives you the ability to hide select pages you may not want showing up in search engines.
One of the simplest ways to illustrate search engine friendly vs. not search engine friendly is with URL structure. Let’s say you have a page about how to weave baskets underwater.
A search engine friendly site would have a URL like mysite.com/underwater-basket-weaving.
A non-friendly site would have a URL like mysite.com/p-123.ajax.
Search engine crawlers will immediately know what the first URL is about. They will have no idea what the second URL is about. It may not seem like a big deal in itself, but this type of structuring extends to page titles, image titles, meta descriptions, internal links, and more.
What’s really great about search engine friendly sites is that they all you to easily update and customize all of this info. This allows you to truly optimize your site for search engines, hence the name SEO.
The Different Between Search Engine Friendliness and Optimization
As previously stated, search engine friendliness is a foundation. It’s the starting point. It’s the equivalent of getting out of bed, changing into your workout clothes, and standing in front of the door to the gym. If you want to see results, you’re going to have to go inside and put some work in.
That’s SEO. It’s the equivalent of getting your website into shape. It’s going to take time, effort, consistency, and technique. If you really want to be effective and see growth, you’ll need a plan. It starts with ensuring your current site is covering the basics: unique content & meta information, alt image tags, proper structuring of page titles, etc. From there, you can begin developing a strategy for keywords, phrases, and general search demographic. This will give you direction for expanding and creating content, which in turn will improve your rankings for these keywords.
Is SEO Enough?
When it comes to improving traffic to your website, SEO is arguably the most effective thing you can do. After all, over 50% of website traffic comes from search engines. Still, it is just one piece of a larger strategy called inbound marketing. This includes social media, email marketing, free resource creation, webinars, and more. All of these can work together to bring more traffic to your website.
Of course, traffic doesn’t necessarily equal business.
This is why content strategy, brand voicing, and user pathways are some of the most critical pieces of a website. You need to immediately speak to the problems of your target customer, establish yourself as the solution, and create clear actions for them to take. Without this, organic traffic is mostly useless.
If you’re wanting to improve your website’s efficiency, we’re here to help. We can absolutely assist with SEO, but first, we need to make sure your messaging and pathways are where they need to be. Click here to fill out a quick questionnaire and get the process started.
