Written by: Ariana Geneva

Search engine optimization is a viable marketing strategy and occurs whether your business actively uses it to your advantage or simply lets other businesses enjoy visibility over you. Utilizing SEO tactics can be the difference between showing up on the coveted first page of Google results and the seventh “o” in the Gooooooooooooooogle results. 

So what is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine (Oxford English Dictionary). If you have a website, SEO should be a priority; the tactic will drive website traffic to expose your company to new customers, build brand awareness and recognition, and say hello to your new customers.

How is SEO beneficial?

Capitalizing on SEO techniques will improve your search odds when potential customers use keywords synonymous with your business. The higher the quality of SEO efforts you utilize on your website, the better the odds are that your business will rank higher on the results page. 

Putting SEO in action.

The SEO techniques that CC uses for our website content include tailoring our URL slugs. A URL slug, or website slug, is the last part of your URL address and serves as a unique identifier for a specific page. For example, we use a URL slug for each blog entry and for individual team bios. Some host websites include SEO options that you should take advantage of if possible. We are able to choose our SEO title and descriptions for each individual page on our website. Maximize your website’s copy and curate the specific keywords you want to be synonymous with your brand. Your copy exists to inform your customers AND to help search engines crawl through your content to determine how to rank you in the search results. 

SEO is constantly evolving. The latest pivot from Google’s SEO practices included prioritizing mobile search results to reflect the increasing number of mobile Google searches over desktop use. Keyword research tools exist to help you determine what keywords or phrases are most likely to increase your visibility and search rankings. Including your keywords in your website titles, URL slugs, image text, and website copy are all SEO tactics. Long-tail keywords are the best way to use keywords to your advantage. “Long tail keywords are long (usually 4+ word) terms that searchers use in Google and other search engines.” (BackLinko) The best examples of long tail keywords can be found in your Google search, thanks to Google Suggest, the built-in tool that fills in your search keywords with a whole phrase. 

SEO doesn’t have to be a difficult task for your business to put into action. A number of different resources and tools help make finding information such as trending keywords and phrases available, including SEMRush, SearchEngineJournal, and Google Analytics. Even Google has keyword resources if you have a Google Ad account. A quick Google search can lead you in the right direction to help you find the best SEO techniques that you can put into practice today.