This is the sixth part in a series of six articles about SEO. Stay tuned to Schoolhouse Marketing for the full series on optimizing your marketing channels for the homeschooling market.
Do you think that all SEO best practices are mainly for search engines so that you can achieve good rankings in search results? While this is part of it, the most important reason you should be regularly working on SEO is to improve your site visitor’s experience with your company.
Here are a couple of quotes from Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide:
“You should build a website to benefit your users, and any optimization should be geared toward making the user experience better. One of those users is a search engine, which helps other users discover your content.”
“Optimize content for your users, not search engines.
Designing your site around your visitors’ needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.”
Most of the recommended tasks for SEO are centered on providing an enjoyable experience for the site visitor. Take a look through a few of the top site issues that negatively impact your favor in search results and with site visitors:
- Broken links – How annoying is it to click on a link that goes to a non-existent page or a non-existent website?
- Slow page load – Waiting for a page to load will often result in the website not being viewed at all.
- Site not designed for various screen sizes – Screens come in all different shapes and sizes. If your content is only optimized for a larger screen, that tiny text on a small screen will not make a good impression.
- Not using heading tags properly – This is a big one for accessibility but affects every visitor for quick scanning and readability. Using H1 tags and the proper placement of H2–5 tags on every page helps people know what you’re about quickly.
- Not adding metadata – This data is only readable by search engines and browsers, but some metadata will be displayed to users on search engine result pages (SERPs). Fill in meta descriptions, alt text on images, and other site metadata for the benefit of your anticipated site visitors, i.e., make your words appeal to your ideal customer.
Want to delve a bit deeper into the website elements of SEO? See our related post Top 5 Tips on How to Improve Website SEO Performance.
When you focus on what your ideal customer wants and adjust your site accordingly, the search engines will send them your way. You also want to ensure you have consistent branding across all your marketing platforms and are encouraging engagement for every stage of your buyer’s journey. While consistent branding may not be a direct SEO factor, it does affect how people interact with your company and is a major factor in improving your authority in the industry and definitely improves your customer’s experience.
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