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You are here: Home / blog / SEO 101 – The 3 Main Criteria

SEO 101 – The 3 Main Criteria

in blog, search engine optimization on 01/15/14

Many people have heard about search engine optimization or SEO and heard how it works but there are three things that you should keep in your mind at all times – content, relevancy and competition.

SEO is about content, relevancy and competition - learn it and use it and your rankings will improve. Click To Tweet

Content is King in SEOKeyword rich content equals value to the consumer AND to search engines

We know you know this and have heard of this. Basically you need to have content (those are written words (paragraphs) on each page within your website.  This is helpful to the consumer as it explains the story about that page, gives the basic details that they may see within the pictures or products on your site and gives the search engines that same information since they can’t “see” the pictures.  One other thing to note would be to have the right keyword density.

What does density have to do with anything? As you know, having keywords on your site is important to help the search engines drive traffic based on the phrases they enter into the search engines.  However, you don’t want to just put a list of all of your keywords.  While this may seem easier, it appears spammy (yes, that is a word) or looks like keyword stuffing.

Google will penalize those who use this tactic so a good rule of thumb would be to include keywords within the content of each page in a way that seems natural and a good fit for the page.  It helps to use other variations of your keywords, parts of or even synonyms for those keywords as search engines look and analyze the whole page – keywords and content, as noted in a discussion on rankings in 2012.

Bottom line – keep it real, use keyword-rich content that sounds natural so it makes sense to the consumer, who is ultimately who you are selling to, but in a manner that helps the search engines.

Relevancy in SEO, huh?

Relevancy is basically defined as having the ability to satisfy a need of the user, but how does relevance apply to search engine optimization?  For example, a person types in the search engine query “car repair,” and up comes the search engine results. The user clicks a link, and lands on a car dealership service page. This would be relevant to the search because they ended on the right page.

However, if the link took them to the sales page, it isn’t as relevant and the user will have to work to find the service page. You don’t want to have to work for your answers; you are doing that by typing in the appropriate queries in the search engine. You don’t want to have to search the website, too, right?

What if, in that same scenario, that dealership didn’t have a service department? How did their website come up for that search?

The content on the page is about cars, because it is a car dealership, but maybe within the content repair information was included. The search engine made that guess and likely it won’t happen again – especially if you (and other users) abandon that page. The search engines are going to “learn” that this website is not a good return for that term.

So be sure that you have keyword-rich content and that the keywords on your site are relevant to the products and services you provide. Additionally, make sure your meta tags – those are the behind the scenes ‘tags’ such as the title tag, description tag and keyword tags that help with Seo –are relevant to the pages in order to get more accurate results for search queries for the consumers.

Competition, the winner’s on topBeing competitive, thanks to popularity is great for SEO and search results

Competition isn’t just about your competitors; it’s also about how popular your page is, how often your site is talked about, linked to or clicked on.  So, the more popular your website, the more competitive it is.

The search engines will take your site’s popularity into consideration when they decide which sites to provide in search results. If you have a decent amount of quality inbound links, (Inbound links are just that, links that are coming from another quality site and landing on yours. The more prestigious the better and poor quality links can cause you more damage that help.) you are drumming up talk on your social media, people are talking about your blogs, your site is getting good traffic and the like, these count in the competition “score” also.

So, the bottom line: Promote your site on other sites, on social media, paid advertising and within forums. Create blogs like this one and promote it on social media and get people interested in what you have to offer in hopes that they will talk about your products, service or site more.

Should you have any questions about your relevancy, your competition or content on your site, please contact me, reach out and ask your questions as I would love to help. Thanks for stopping by!

~Kristen

19 Comments

About Kristen Day

Kristen is a small business owner and thus dedicated to other small business owners by helping them improve their online presence with having a professional and mobile responsive website, then implementing search engine optimization and pay per click advertising all of which are necessary 'evils' in the digital marketing sphere but enables small business owners the opportunity to compete with larger companies. When not in the digital arena, you can find her hanging with her girlfriends, husband, drinking a margarita or shooting competition (not in that order).

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Comments

  1. Michael Kawula says

    01/15/2014 at 11:59 AM

    Great post, great info!

    Reply
  2. Patricia says

    01/15/2014 at 1:07 PM

    Good information! Surprising how many people still don’t understand the necessity of good SEO – and that wordpress really is the way to go with plugins like WordPress SEO by Joost. Great job! P

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      01/15/2014 at 2:44 PM

      I have used the All in One SEO plug in by Michael Tauber, the SEO Yoost, of course… but I prefer to be able to alter my own. You are right, they understand the need. Thanks!

      Reply
  3. Crystal Peteson says

    01/15/2014 at 1:20 PM

    Great post. SEO is one of the areas that we’re focusing on with our company so this info is very useful to us. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      01/15/2014 at 2:43 PM

      Glad to help Crystal and glad you are focusing on it. Let me know if I can help!

      Reply
  4. Beth Niebuhr says

    01/15/2014 at 1:47 PM

    Nice summary of SEO. People are so often misinformed about it.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      01/15/2014 at 2:43 PM

      Thanks Beth. You are so very right, or they just don’t get it… and if they don’t understand, they fail to see the need for it.

      Reply
  5. Jackie Harder says

    01/15/2014 at 3:59 PM

    I liked your comments about relevancy and the car-repair example. It’s a good reminder not just from an SEO standpoint, but also from position of not ticking off your reader. This is why so many SEO specialists like you talk about the need to keep one major keyword (or phrase) per page. Excellent advice.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      01/15/2014 at 4:09 PM

      Thanks Jackie, it is a harder topic to explain, especially to folks who don’t use it or know about it, which is why having examples is essential. Thanks for the feedback!

      Reply
  6. Maria Stefanopoulos says

    01/15/2014 at 11:24 PM

    Great information! SEO can be a bit tricky. There have been occasions where what I’m looking for was called by another name than what I searched for. (Gotta love he English language!)

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      01/16/2014 at 9:54 AM

      Thanks Maria. You are so right, SEO is very tricky and can be hard to understand for the layperson (self included!). What you mentioned is another great reason to do keyword research (hmmm, another blog topic) for your website to be sure that you are using the most searched (higher volumes) keywords. Nothing like writing your pages on your site about automobile sales when people search for car sales, right?

      Reply
  7. Beth Blacker says

    01/16/2014 at 8:59 AM

    Keeping up with the rules of SEO is exhausting but you definitely simplified it so that even someone like me who would rather have a root canal than deal with SEO understands it…thanks!

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      01/16/2014 at 9:55 AM

      Who are YOU telling Beth. I couldn’t agree more. Thank you and I am glad that I made it more easily understood. I have had many root canals and I, personally, have to say… I wouldn’t wish those on my worst enemy. lol… but thanks! Let me know if you need any help, I would love to take it off your #sweet plate! 😉

      Reply
  8. Marita Steffe says

    01/16/2014 at 11:33 AM

    Great, I got a bit more clarification on SEO now, it’s not my strong point. I like to use keywords so they fit into the content. There is nothing worse than reading something stuffed with keywords. I am glad Google made it a rule.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      01/16/2014 at 2:06 PM

      Glad to help clear up the muddy waters a little Marita! Everything can’t be your strong point! 😉 Glad you use keywords in your can’t but not overdoing it. Most excellent, let me know if I can help. 🙂

      Reply
  9. Lorii Abela says

    01/16/2014 at 1:35 PM

    Good read! This should be shared to everybody, to help them be informed about the benefits of SEO.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      01/16/2014 at 2:05 PM

      Thanks… I surely hope they all read it as it would benefit us all. Let me know if I can assist you with your business SEO.

      Reply
  10. Edmund S. Lee says

    01/17/2014 at 11:52 AM

    I love your three key points there, especially relevancy. For me, it makes perfect sense.

    Reply
    • Kristen Wilson says

      01/17/2014 at 12:57 PM

      Thanks Edmund… glad it makes sense… and perfect sense is even better! 🙂

      Reply

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