What is SEO?

Whole.Codes
Aug 22, 2017 · 3 min read

There is a lot of buzz and mystery around the illusive “SEO”. Let’s start simple, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Ok, so what does that mean? It basically means optimizing your website content so that your customers can easily find it, and so that search engine crawlers can understand and find it. Real SEO is driven by good content. Content that educates and relates to what your business, and more importantly, website is trying to communicate to your customer. Let’s use the classic Pet Store example. Say you own a Pet Store in Brooklyn New York and you have a fancy Shopify site to sell some of your products on, and you want people to find you when they search for “Pet Store, Brooklyn New York” and all derivatives of that e.g. “Pet Store, Brooklyn” etc. Here are some basic steps you want to consider to get started (in no particular order):

  1. Is your domain (mypetstore.com) secured e.g. https://
  2. Is your site Mobile Friendly? Test your site here.
  3. Are your pages utilizing Structured Data and is appropriate content marked up?
  4. Do you have social media profiles setup (Facebook, Twitter etc.)
  5. Do your pages have the appropriate meta description tags?
  6. Have you created a local business listing with Google?
  7. Is your site optimized in terms of loading and quality?

Some of these things Shopify actually will handle for you, for example ensuring meta tags/descriptions are properly present on each page, and structured data is present for things like product listings etc. So if you are using something like Shopify, this job becomes easier. However, it’s important to note, SEO is an on-going effort. Search engines want their customers to find the most relevant, qualified, and secured results. Things like secure socket layer (SSL) certificates e.g. https:// are very import as well now, think about it, would you send your customer somewhere that wasn't safe? Of course not, and neither do search engines. Also, mobile friendliness is extremely important these days, a large percentage on web traffic in general is now mobile, so ensuring your site is 100% mobile friendly will ensure a higher ranking of your website when users search.

If you are building your site from scratch, try and utilize responsive CSS frameworks. Depending on the technology you are using, there are a lot of tools and frameworks that will help you stay responsive while developing:

Content is king with SEO. In the same respect as security, search engines also want to send their customers to places that make sense. If your content is too broad or light, or doesn't really say much about you being a pet store, you are likely to be farther down the list than others that clearly outline their business and what they offer, and where they offer it. Depending on your platform, there are tools to assist you in content creation, some free options include:

In conclusion, search engine optimization is an on-going effort that requires a substantial amount of time and effort. If you are passionate about your business, then writing about it is usually a lot of fun; however, if you are a small business, then where is the time for that? WholeCodes has a passion for working with local and small business as well as decades of experience growing up with the web. Contact us anytime, or simply follow our social channels for some great (free) tips and education.

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