SEO, a small, three-letter word that has struck fear in the hearts of many – but it doesn’t need to be that way!

There is a multitude of ways to ease into learning SEO in order to better understand how this digital marketing technique can positively affect websites across Google’s search engine results pages. Let’s start by defining what SEO actually is: SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving the quantity and quality of the traffic coming into your website.

SEO is organic traffic meaning you cannot pay Google to rank higher in the SEO section of the search engine results page like you can in the paid section. So how do you incorporate SEO into your site and keep it ranking highly while also bringing in the traffic that matters most? Here are five tips to ensure you’re kicking off your SEO campaign with a bang:

Keywords

Keywords are super important in the world of SEO because it’s exactly how searchers will find your website and/or business. For example, if you are a company that sells baseball gloves, you’ll want to incorporate phrases such as ‘baseball gloves,’ ‘ball gloves,’ and ‘baseball mitts,’ into your website in order to show up for those terms when searched.

Content

Keywords lead to another very important part of SEO which is content. You should be injecting your researched keywords into great content on your site so that it resonates not only with the search engines but also with your consumer. It’s important when writing SEO content to write for people and not to keyword stuff.

Links

Once you’ve got a great set of keywords to start with and you’ve drummed up some content to go along with it – the next step is links! Internal linking through the website helps users navigate your site with ease and may help them find answers that are hidden in the deeper interior pages of your website.

For example, on the homepage, you might mention ‘leather baseball gloves’ and link it to the leather baseball glove page so that the consumer can easily reach their interests while reading through your website. Sharing links with others as well as backlinking, when another site links back to your site, are valuable ways to gain more SEO leverage.

Meta Tags

Meta tags provide information about a particular webpage of your website, allowing the search engine to know what the page is about and also giving the consumer a brief snippet of knowledge as well. The most popular meta tags are meta titles that live in the header of a web page and are also used for ranking within the SERPs.

The point of a meta title is to give concise, valuable information in 60 characters or less! Ex: ‘Leather Baseball Gloves for Sale | Akron, OH’The second most popular meta tag is a meta description which is often displayed in the actual search engine results for your website. While it isn’t used for ranking, the meta description should ultimately entice a user to click through to your site and should be around 160 characters. Ex: ‘Looking for well-made leather baseball gloves? Then John’s Baseball Hut in Akron, OH has what you need to score a homerun! Call us at 555-555 to learn more.’

Technical

There are many different aspects to the technical side of SEO that can help improve your site’s ranking on Google. Ensuring that you are checking in on your site’s speed is a big one and if it is taking your pages more than 2-5 seconds to load then you have a few options to look at first. Check the images on your website and make sure they have been compressed for faster loading times. Reduce redirects so that your site is streamlined and review HTML so there is no extra coding that could be bogging down your website.

And finally, we’ll leave you with a few tips at a glance to ensure you’re ready to rock and roll with your new-found SEO knowledge:

• SEO takes time –you won’t rank #1 overnight but keep working at it and good things will come!

• SEO takes work –there are many aspects to the SEO game and a great strategy incorporates a little bit of everything.

• SEO works well with other digital marketing initiatives–don’t forget all the other great ways to market digitally such as PPC, social, and local listings; it all works together!