Everything You Need to Know About Driving Customers and Clients to Your Website
If you’ve ever considered marketing your business online, you’ve probably heard of search
engine optimization (SEO). Even so, if you’re not thinking day-in and day-out about digital marketing strategies like a leading SEO agency near you does, you may feel a little tripped-up on the details.
Here’s how it works: Search engines like Google and Bing spend their time “crawling” websites on the Internet. They do this to determine which ones to display on their results pages after a user searches a word, phrase, or question. The results are ranked based on how relevant the website is to the user’s search.
Successful businesses ensure that their websites are optimized for search engines. That way, their website appears when users search for terms related to their business. But that’s not all – it’s also important to ensure that users stay on the site and take action (like calling, filling out a lead-generation form, or buying a product or service).
Search engines help users find great businesses to maintain their prominence as the go-to place to search. Businesses ensure their pages get chosen by search engines, so they can provide excellent products and services to customers. This relationship is beneficial for everyone involved.
Take a look at these quick stats that demonstrate how powerful SEO can be:
- Organic search (when a customer decides to search something they want to know, then clicks on a website a search engine displays a ranked list of sites) accounts for 53.3% of all website traffic.
- Although social media platforms are considered a key way to connect with customers, SEO drives 1,000%+ more traffic than social media.
Keeping this powerfully convincing data in mind, businesses can’t afford to miss out on using search engine marketing in Kansas City and beyond. In this article, find out exactly what a premier digital marketing agency recommends when developing your website, including what it takes to ensure your website is ADA compliant and how to write for search engine optimization.
Get to Know the Big 4: On-Site, Off-Site, and Technical Website Optimization, and ADA Compliance
To understand the immense value that SEO provides businesses like yours, it is important to understand the four most important ways of optimizing your website, so that customers can find you online, and you can turn these opportunities into sales.
- On-Site SEO
Your on-site SEO is all about the content on your website. The easiest way to optimize your content is a two-pronged approach: keywords and “E-E-A-T.”- Keyword Research and Usage: A primary skill for website optimization, businesses research relevant keywords that users are searching to find them. Then, these keywords are used in the business’s web content, so when a user searches that keyword, a search engine will display their website in the ranked results pages. An SEO agency near you reviews keyword data and writes for search engine optimization. They ensure that when a search engine “crawls” every website to find the most relevant selections, it will put your business at the top of the list.
- E-E-A-T: Google updates its Quality Rater Guidelines which articulate how the search engine evaluates content when determining their search result rankings. Although Google’s methodology is truly only known to their team, Google continuously provides updates to inform website owners about their current initiatives to help connect users with the right pages. The most recent update requires content that satisfies the acronym E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness). Google’s search engine algorithm crawls websites to determine whether they provide a rich, efficient experience in which the user finds credible, authoritative information, products, services, or whatever they’re looking for. Search engines like Google and Bing want users to depend on them, just as you want your customers to depend on you, so it is in your interest to provide the very best website for your customers. The major search engines will reward you.
- Off-Site SEO
Off-site strategies are digital marketing strategies that you perform outside of your website that will drive traffic right to you:- Social media marketing that provides a link back to your site.
- Earning links to your site from other websites that have an interest in sharing your content.
- Optimizing your Google Business Profile: This is an essential off-site SEO strategy that serves as a welcome mat between search engine results and your website. When customers search for your product or service, a list of ranked businesses will appear, along with reviews, contact information, address, a link to your website, directions, and even a space to update customers on promotions, events, and more. When users search for your industry, you want to be sure your profile appears as an enticing option.
- Technical SEO
Your business also needs to ensure that your website is crawlable by search engines in the first place – but that won’t happen without technical expertise. A web developer who specializes in search engine marketing in Kansas City understands the significant work ahead of them when optimizing their website for search engines – and for customers.- URL structure best practices
- Structured data or “schema”
- Effective navigation
- Mobile-friendly pages
- Hosting
- Security
- Much, much more
ADA Compliant Website Optimizations Benefit All Web Users – And Your Business Wins, Too
The American Disabilities Act requires that businesses are accessible for everyone, regardless of their mental or physical ability. Just as a brick-and-mortar business needs to include architectural features that provide accessibility for any person who wants to enter, your website needs to do the same.
If you decide to partner with an award-winning team for search engine marketing in Kansas City, you’ll find that they likely have best practices for designing ADA-compliant websites. To make your website fully accessible for all users, they must be “perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.” Essentially, this means that your site provides every website visitor with a wide variety of options to hear or see, use, read, and navigate.
But what does ADA compliance have to do with SEO? Yes, you could face a lawsuit for non-compliance, and yes, this is the ethical choice for all businesses; however, there’s even more to consider. ADA compliance not only provides ethical value, which is absolutely essential in today’s marketplace. But, ensuring your website is accessible for all helps ensure that search engines will prioritize your site when users search.
Why ADA-compliant websites are also SEO compliant:
- When providing access to your website including for people with low vision, visual impairment, blindness, as well as people who are deaf or hard of hearing, you’re also making it easier for search engines to crawl your site and understand its contents.
- Including title tags for your webpages, alternate text for images, ensuring easy navigability, and organized HTML tags for your website’s headings greatly benefits people with disabilities when they’re searching online. It also helps search engine algorithms to understand what’s on your page.
- Search engines reward your conscientiousness in terms of website usability, as engines like Google and Bing want to be able to deliver the very best, clearest, most organized, and effective content. This helps customers to get what they want and also establishes trust between the user and the search engine.
- Overall, it is in your interest to ensure that everyone can use your website, including search engines whose job it is to decide whether your site is worth ranking for a significant audience – that includes everyone.
Reflecting On Your Business’ Website’s Optimization Practices
Consider what you’ve learned above about the “Big Four.” Ask yourself if you have a strategy for each of these types of search engine optimization, including writing, web development, and marketing on a variety of platforms.
Are you putting sufficient resources and effort into each? If so, it is highly likely that your business will benefit from SEO – as search engines will know how to find you, rank you, and position you right where customers can find you.
Reflect on each of the questions below. If you decide to work with a search engine marketing firm in Kansas City, your answers to these questions could serve as great conversation starters. Any premier SEO agency near you will listen carefully and audit the current status of your website and provide services to enhance on- and off-site SEO, as well as ADA compliance.
- Do you own an analytic tool to help you perform keyword research to determine what keywords you want to rank for, as well as keywords your competitors are ranking for?
- Do you have dedicated content writers who can write for search engine optimization by adding keyword-rich, expert-level content for your website’s pages, blog, and Google Business Profile?
- Does your website and articles include multimedia elements, as well as up-to-date information?
- Can your writers speak with expertise and authority about your products and services, as well as relevant topics in your industry?
- Are you investing in digital marketing efforts outside of content writing, such as social media?
- Does your web developer offer comprehensive services to ensure your site offers a technically sound, exceptional user-experience?
- Is your website effectively coded, manageably structured, navigable, and secure?
- Is your website ADA compliant? Have you studied ADA compliance best practices to make your website accessible for people with disabilities, including people who are blind, or have low vision or vision impairments, as well as people who are hard of hearing or deaf?
The more “yes” answers you’ve totaled, the more benefits you’ll receive from this digital marketing strategy that essentially drives more than half of web traffic and leads to significant results.
How to Partner with Our Website Optimization Team to Tap into the Rewards of SEO Today
Content writing for search engine optimization, developing your brand with an omnichannel marketing campaign, as well as ensuring your website is ADA compliant and well-managed technically will position your business for maximum user traffic and maximum growth.
So, what’s your next step? First, you have to decide if you’re ready to continue developing your understanding of search engine marketing skills for your Kansas City. At this point, you can take a deeper-dive with an SEO agency that knows their stuff. When you work with a premier SEO agency near you, you’ll find they are fully dedicated to the practice of search engine optimization because it works time and time again for their clients.
Learn more about the many powerful digital marketing tactics you can leverage to meet and even exceed your business goals.
Peter Mishler, senior digital copywriter at iFocus Marketing, is dedicated to using language to help clients find their audiences. He is the author of two books: a Kathryn A. Morton Prize-winning collection of poetry, from Sarabande Books (2018) and a book of reflections for public school teachers from Andrews McMeel Publishing (2021). His poetry has appeared in many national publications, including The Paris Review, and he is a contributing editor for Literary Hub. New to marketing, Peter taught English for 15 years.
