There are countless forms of internet marketing. Social media marketing, affiliate marketing, network marketing, email marketing, local business marketing, and many more. Search engine marketing is useful, because it can help with every type of marketing. It is essentially at the core of everything we do as internet marketers. Mastering SEO is not only a useful skill, it is downright essential and can be extremely lucrative if done right.
The Question Remains: What Is SEO?
According to Wikipedia: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine‘s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural,” “organic,” or “earned” results. In other words, SEO is the effective and/or deliberate manipulation of website ranking through the use of various techniques and strategies. I think it’s safe to say no one would ever categorize SEO as easily. There are SEO experts that dedicate their lives to the pursuit of understanding the search engines and the algorithms they employ.
Just like meteorology is the study of weather and attempts to forecast it, SEO is the study of search engines and attempts to predict how a website will rank in accordance with set rules and variables. I think that is why I am so drawn to SEO. As a meteorologist myself, I can appreciate the complexity and challenge it gives me to dissect and analyze proper search engine optimization. In order to understand and apply proper SEO strategy, it is important to go back to the source and understand search engines.
Milwaukee SEO And The Best Search Engine
Do you remember Excite, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Dogpile, or HotBot? Some of them you may have even used back in the 90s (Lycos was my favorite in the late 90s simply because I thought it was cool that a dog was finding me useful information). In today’s world of search engines, there is more competition, but fewer search engines that people use than a certain search engine we obsess over as Milwaukee SEO fanatics.
Google has been extremely dominant since the early 2000s. In fact, they command a market share of nearly 70% as of September 2015.
This means that it is pointless to dedicate all your time attempting to rank on AOL or Baidu. If you want to really get loads of visitors and make good money in eCommerce or client services, Google is the gateway to success. It helps that Google owns Youtube as well.
It just so happens that the majority of the material out there on SEO is intended to educate you on the best SEO strategies pertaining to Google. I still find a decent volume of traffic comes from Yahoo and Bing, even though ranking on Google is my primary objective. The same will hold true for you, so don’t lose sleep over trying to rank on everything. If you do the right things, it will happen.
What Are The Primary Ranking Factors for Milwaukee SEO?
A wise woman once said, “Google loves you when everyone else loves you first.” It kind of sounds like pushing the cart before the horse, doesn’t it? It’s like trying to get that first job after college. Everyone wants a candidate with experience, but you just graduated with your degree and are looking to gain that experience. It seems unfair! That’s when you are basically introduced to the idea that the world doesn’t work the way it does to help you, but to help itself. Google is there to help itself. In order to help itself, it needs to serve content it thinks its users are looking for.
Google will only help you when you have proven your presence will help it. Are you ready to prove yourself in the eyes of Google? Great! Take a look at the graphic below. It’s just PERFECT!
I could find nothing better than the graphic above to illustrate website ranking. I must give credit to Search Engine Land for producing this fine explanation. Do you remember how I said SEO is like science? If this picture above doesn’t prove that, I don’t know what does! After all, the ingredients above can form a chemical reaction that boosts your website to the top of Google searches. The question is, will your website explode into oblivion, or explode in popularity? The proper application of the factors above will decide that for you.
A Closer Look At The Milwaukee SEO Success Factors
The periodic table of SEO success factors shares an aesthetic representation of the framework of ranking factors, but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg. You could spend days combing through courses on SEO and only just scratch the surface. For the sake of indulgence, let’s take a moment or two to break this table down into easy-to-digest pieces.
The Two Main Branches Of SEO
In order to optimize a website for the search engines, one must think in terms of two branches of thought: the SEO on the page or site you are trying to rank, and the way your site is seen and perceived externally. These are commonly referred to as on-page and off-page SEO. There are three main factors for on-page SEO and four factors for off-page SEO.
The three main factors for on-page SEO are:
- Content
- Architecture
- HTML
The four main factors for off-page SEO are:
- Trust
- Links
- Personal
- Social
These factors combine together to create a rather complex algorithm that SEO experts spend their careers debating over. It is true that Google updates change the importance of these factors quite frequently, but they are still important to be aware of. That does not mean to say there are other factors that we may not even be aware of! Google is sneaky like that!
Let’s dive a little deeper and take a look at the various elements associated with each factor (as shown above). Any elements with the V carry a negative weight and result in a penalty for your site. Factors with a green font below are positive and red font are negative.
Onpage SEO Factors:
Content
- (Cq) Quality – Are pages well written with high-quality content people are drawn to?
- (Cr) Research – Have you researched the keywords people may use to find your content?
- (Cw) Words – Does your content use the words you help they’ll be found for?
- (Cf) Fresh – Is your content updated regularly?
- (Cv) Vertical – Do you use varying forms of media (i.e. images, video, news, etc.) in your content?
- (Ca) Answers – Does your content answer questions posed in search results?
- (Vt) Thin – Is your content thin or shallow, lacking any real value?
Architecture
- (Ac) Crawl – Can the robots easily crawl your site?
- (Ad) Duplicate – Does your site handle duplicate content well?
- (Am) Mobile – Is your site mobile-optimized?
- (As) Speed – Does your site load quickly?
- (Au) URLs – Do URLs contain keywords your pages are trying to rank for?
- (Ah) HTTPS – Does the site use HTTPS for the security of visitors?
- (Vc) Cloaking – Do you show search engines different pages than humans?
HTML
- (Ht) Titles – Do the HTML title tags contain the relevant keywords?
- (Hd) Description – Does the HTML meta description contain the relevant keywords?
- (Hs) Structure – Do pages use structured data to enhance the listings?
- (Hh) Header – Do headlines and subheadlines contain the relevant keywords?
- (Vs) Stuffing – Does your site overuse the target keywords you want to rank for?
- (Vh) Hidden – Does your color or site design hide words you are trying to rank for?
Offpage SEO Factors:
Trust
- (Ta) Authority – Is your site seen as an authority on any specific topic?
- (Te) Engage – Is your bounce rate low and do visitors spend time reading your content?
- (Th) History – Has your site existed for a while and operated the same way?
- (Ti) Identity – Does your site verify the identity of its authors?
- (Vp) Piracy – Has your site been flagged for sharing stolen content without proper reference to its sources?
- (Va) Ads – Does your site run excessive ads, particularly above the fold?
Links
- (Lq) Quality – Do the links pointing toward your site come from trusted sources?
- (Lt) Text – Does the anchor text for the links pointing to your site contain relevant keywords?
- (Ln) Numbers – Do you have a higher quantity of links pointing to your pages?
- (Vp) Paid – Have you purchased links to enhance your ranking potential?
- (Vs) Spam – Have you created backlinks by spamming other sites, forums, or directories?
Personal
- (Pc) Country – Ranks higher for people who live in your country.
- (Pl) Locality – Ranks higher for people in your local area or region.
- (Ph) History – Ranks higher for people who have favored or shared your content in the past.
- (Ps) Social – Ranks higher for someone who has socially favored your site.
Social
- (Sr) Reputation – Do respected people or companies on social media share your content?
- (Ss) Shares – Do many people share your content on social networks?
If there is one thing for you to take away from the entire Periodic table of SEO Success factors, is that on-page SEO factors are a lot easier for you to control than off-page factors. The on-page has to do with your site while the off-page has to do with the rest of the internet. The point is not to fake the popularity of your site, but to contribute to the internet and get noticed naturally. Updating your site consistently with fresh, valuable content that interests other readers is the single, BEST way to rank.
Milwaukee SEO Conclusion
So, the Moral of the story here is that Google wants content and websites that add value to their SERPs (i.e. their own business). The more relevant and healthy your page is, the better it will rank. Taking the time to study SEO and the many SEO success factors is the first step to realizing positive web ranking. Next Level Services can help businesses of all sizes rank better. We understand on-page and off-page ranking and have access to cutting-edge tools to get the job done quickly and effectively.
Next Level Services offers competitive SEO packages to the Milwaukee area and provides Milwaukee SEO packages. You can go to our contact page to get in touch with us or get a quote here.