What is SEO?
SEO, or “search engine optimisation”, is the process of increasing traffic to your website through manipulating keywords and high-quality content. Using keywords within your content will increase the likelihood of users finding your site when completing an online search. If your site is listed within the results of an online search, it is going to increase your brand’s visibility and the level of traffic to your page. This is going to increase engagement with your brand and therefore potentially result in a sale and profit for your company.
How to Use Keywords
In order to use keywords effectively within your content, you need to consider who is interested in your content – who is your target audience? Pinpointing a specific target audience will allow you to refine your keywords and therefore create the most effective SEO.
The best way to refine your key wording is to think how your audience thinks. So, who are your target audience and what are they looking for? What will they search for online and what wording will they use to search this?
For example, if you are a children’s clothing brand, parents are most likely your target audience. When considering what a parent might search for to reach a children’s clothing site, the obvious words that come to mind are ‘children’ and ‘clothing’. These terms are useful, but more specific keywords need to be included also. You need to consider what your brand offers and what will appeal to parents – these will be useful key words to use. More specific words or phrases could be ‘practical’, ‘fashionable’ or ‘Australian made’. These keywords can also be selected based on what you believe your target audience is looking for – and therefore what you believe they will be searching for. Once you have decided upon the keywords that suit your brand and audience, these can be included within your content and heading titles.
Relevance, Volume and Competition
There are a few more things to take into consideration when selecting keywords – these include search volume, relevance and competition. Search volume refers to how many people are searching for a keyword. If a lot of people are searching for a specific keyword this means you have a large market, but it also means you have a lot of competition. A popular keyword means other companies will most likely also be using this word within their content – and therefore more competition. More competition simply means it is more difficult for your site to be listed at the top of the search engine results page. So, in order to stand out, you need to make sure your site and content is relevant. Relevant and good quality content is going to increase your sites ranking alongside the effective use of keywords.
So why is SEO important?
When someone searches for something online, the search engine analyses everything within its reach – all content on the internet that is available to access. The search engine’s goal is to present its user with the most relevant information, depending on what they have searched for. Relevance is selected by the search engine based on the SEO used by each site – so the more effective a site’s use of SEO, the more likely it is to appear at the top of the search results. SEO is an ‘organic’ and free way to create traffic to your page.
It’s important to note that other factors affect the results of an online search. For example, a company is able to pay to have their site appear first in the list of search results. Organic search results are listed under those that have been paid for so using effective SEO methods, allows your site to appear at the top of the organic results. Other factors that contribute to effective SEO are the quality of the content and the user’s experience within a site. One factor that can increase user experience and quality of content is heading tags.
What is a Heading Tag?
A heading tag is the title or subtitle displayed on the web page directly above the content. Heading tags create structure within your content and tell the user exactly what to expect. They also allow the content within a web page to be divided up into smaller, easy to read sections – each section with its own heading tag. Most people don’t read every word when reading a webpage, so heading tags allow a user to scan a page and find the section that interests them specifically.
This overall structure makes your site easier to navigate – resulting in increased user experience and better-quality content. Increased user experience means users are more likely to spend longer on your site and return in the future. All these factors contribute to your site’s SEO and ranking within a search engine results page. So, while keywords are an important part of SEO, so is using headings tags. Not only do heading tags assist with SEO,
they are also an important part of creating a user-friendly site that your target audience will want to visit.
