SIDRA

Welcome back to Marketing Bites, a blog series aimed to make marketing topics easy to digest. Today we’re talking about SEO.

What is SEO? If you aren’t in the business world, it isn’t super extra obvious. It doesn’t stand for Seagulls Eating Oreos or the Sun-dried Eggplant Organization (I don’t even know what that would be…). I could keep going but I’ll spare you.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. You could have the most beautiful and easy-to-use website in the world, but if it doesn’t land high on the first page of search results for your target market, no one will find it.

The best way to increase your SEO is to make sure your website EATs: your site should have expertise, authoritativeness, and be trustworthy.

Link building is a great way to help your website EAT. Connecting trusted, high-quality links to your website can increase your standing. Think of it as citing your sources – if you provide no sources, how can viewers know whether or not you know what you’re talking about?

Search engines (like Google or Bing) “crawl” to discover pages across the web. They then store and organize the information (called “indexing”), and finally they rank the content based on how relevant it is to someone’s search query. Linking other sites to your pages make your content more easily discoverable by search engines.

To look at how a company could optimize their website for search engines, we can consider the Red River Zoo in Fargo, ND, as an example. Including links to their website from the World Wildlife Foundation and Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute could increase the trustworthiness and expertise of the Red River Zoo’s website.To learn more about best ways to practice SEO, take this Hubspot Certification or check out this article from MOZ.