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- Topics:
- Search Engine Optimization
Most people have heard of the term Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), and understand its impact on the effectiveness of their website through improved search engine rankings. A site with no SEO is much more difficult – if not impossible – to find if you do not already know its direct URL.
The most important element of any SEO campaign is something known as link building. Each website that posts a link to your website acts like a vote for your website on search engine rankings. This helps make your website more visible and easy to find when people search for related queries.
Link building must be employed for every page of your website, as Google assesses each page individually and assigns it a page rank – not the overall website. This process is called deep linking, which refers to the fact that some of your inbound links go to the inner pages of your website, rather than simply to your home page.
If your site includes product information, think about each of your products and the categories they fit into. These products can benefit greatly from highly relevant inbound links that would direct targeted traffic to specific products, which helps increase your conversion rates by sending visitors directly to items they are interested in purchasing.
Deep linking is also highly appropriate for your informational pages, galleries of images, and blogs. The process, although rather time consuming, enhances user experience and increases your ranking in search engine result pages (SERPs), which in turn helps improve your site’s visibility and conversion rates. A well optimized website should make use of deep linking whenever possible.
Another important aspect of link building is anchor text – the set of words used to connect a target URL to information housed in a different page, or portion of the same page. It is very important to choose highly relevant keywords when creating your anchor texts for inbound links, rather than using generic phrases such as “click here.”
Finally, it is important to understand that SEO is a process, not a task. Therefore, an SEO program is not a project with a clear beginning and end. Rather, it is an ongoing process involving continuous updates. It is most likely that your organization will not see an overnight return on investment (ROI) that can be directly attributed to SEO – but it certainly pays off over time. The truth is that any business with a solid web presence can’t afford to ignore the importance of SEO.
