There are an estimated 3.4 billion active internet users in our world today. If that statistic alone isn’t enough to convince you of the importance of your business’s web presence, consider the remarable rate at which we’ve moved into this digital era. If your business or organization is unable to keep up with digital advancements, you may soon be left behind.
SEO Helps you Reach your Target Audience
Being aware of your website’s SEO (search engine optimization) score is one of the best things you can do to keep tabs on the health of your web presence, and monitor how well clients and prospects can find you. Your SEO score is a measure of how readable your site’s content appears to a search engine, and how well that content fits into the algorithm that a given search engine uses to catalog data. An SEO score reflects the ease with which internet users will be able to locate you on the web: a high SEO score means users searching for the services or information you provide may be able to find you right away, while a poor score indicates that your web content is essentially invisible in a Google, Bing, or similar search.
In a world where most consumers find the services or products they’re looking for on the internet, SEO is one of the most important things you can be investing in to ensure that you remain competitive and relevant within your given field. Search engines such as Google and Bing are the go-to tools for internet users needing to sift through the massive amount of information available on the web, trusting that these sites will show them only the most relevant and useful webpages.
Without proper SEO strategies, the content of your website, however relevant and useful, may be invisible to search engine robots, making it impossible for your target audience to find you this way. If your website isn’t appearing in a search engine query, your overall web presence is hugely compromised, and you are missing out on a large chunk of the market.
How to Improve Your Score
There are many online tools available to analyze the SEO of your website, and provide you with an overall score. But what can be done to maintain a higher than average score and increase the visibility of your web content?
To improve your search rankings and get a handle on your SEO score, maintaining high quality, relevant content is a must. Imagery, videos, and audio are important components of a site that brings in traffic as well. Delivering information in ways that are suited to your target audience will greatly enhance the readability of your site and provide countless ways for search engines to find and catalog your content. Use a variety of media and keep links up-to-date. Broken links make your site look neglected or outdated, which will negatively impact your score.
Since we know that readability is an important factor, pay special attention to layout and formatting. Is it easy for users to navigate your site and find the information they’re looking for? Use interesting and catchy headers, bold fonts and colors, and divide information with subheadings or drop-down menus to make your site fun and easy to use. Allow users to search content to more quickly find the exact information they need, and make it easy for prospects to contact you through the website. Maintaining up-to-date information and improving the usability of your site will go a long way in improving your SEO score, in turn allowing your business or organization to more effectively reach its target audience.