SEO is important and has an impact on the success of our online marketing campaigns but (in the words of youth), ‘What EVEN is it?’

SEO stands for Search Engine (e.g. Google) Optimisation, which in everyday terms means, ‘making your website visible to searchers’. We will look in more detail at this in later blog posts but for now, here are some terms that explain the relationship between SEO and good web content (writing):

Ranking: The position of a website in a list of results after a keyword search. We would all love our websites to be at the top of Google’s results list. Research suggests that most people don’t look beyond the first page of thousands of results. Your search engine ranking is what is affected by SEO.

Keyword: A word that sums up the content of a web page. For example, if you were a hotel in Torquay and we were writing a blog post for you, we would make sure that the words ‘Torquay’, ‘hotel’, ‘accommodation’ and ‘holiday’ appeared naturally in our writing. Then a search for ‘holiday in Torquay’ would pick out your website above that of your rivals.

Keyword Stuffing: The act of inserting too many of the same keyword into one piece of online writing. For example,

“Come on holiday to sunny Torquay, in Torquay we have shops, entertainment and beautiful Torquay beaches. Torquay Beach Hotel is the best place for your Torquay holiday.”

It doesn’t read very well does it? Even more importantly, Google’s algorithms (the programs that undertake searches) recognise keyword stuffing and penalise websites that use it by giving them a low rank.

Content: The elements of your website that have been designed to appeal to the people reading it. It’s simple really, if people enjoy the writing on your website, they are more likely to return and buy something from you.

You can now hopefully see how important SEO is to your online marketing success. Content structure is only one element but it is a vital element. At Fi Darby Freelance we have the expertise to write entertaining content that also meets current SEO requirements.

Feel free to get in touch for an informal chat about how we can help you with blog posts, social media posting, downloadable materials or web pages.

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