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The more people that visit your website, the more likely you are to make a sale, find a new client, or win over a reader for your blog. Simply put, getting traffic to your website is key to achieving your goals. That’s why it’s important to understand search engine optimization (SEO).
Knowing how to optimize your website for different search ranking factors gives you more influence over where your site appears in search engine results pages (SERPs), how many people see your website, and who finds you online.
Read on to learn more about SEO, from how it works, to SEO best practices, and tools for tracking and improving SEO on your website over time.
What is SEO?
SEO is a digital marketing strategy that makes it easy for search engines like Google or Bing to understand the content of your website. SEO strategies are techniques that ensure your website content is relevant to certain search terms and functions well for browsers.
In simpler terms, effective SEO is about making a web page or website as useful as possible to a searcher. The more helpful and relevant a page is to someone’s search intent—i.e., what they want to get out of the results—the more optimized it is for search.
How SEO works
Search engines regularly crawl and index websites—meaning they “read” the content on your web pages. The search engine algorithm ranks website pages based on how accurately, completely, and expertly they speak to different search terms.
Search engines take many factors into account, from how quickly your website loads to how many people click to your page from search, to rank websites. Having good SEO will make search engine algorithms more likely to show your website to searchers.
Why is SEO important?
SEO is important because a majority of searchers don’t make it past page one of the search results. The better visibility you have in search engines and the higher you rank, the more likely that you’ll connect with the right audiences for your brand.
You can take additional steps to grow your audience, like building your brand on social media, but optimizing your site to appear more frequently in search is key to reaching potential customers and moving the needle on metrics like sales.
For example, if you have a shoe line and you’re launching an online store, you can strategically optimize your product pages so that your top-selling sneakers are more likely to appear as an option when someone searches for “best women’s running shoes” online.
6 ways to improve your website’s SEO
You can hire an expert to optimize your website, review our SEO checklist, and take your own steps to improve your website’s SEO. No matter your approach, it’s good to know how to do some SEO work yourself. Search engines regularly update their algorithms and change how they evaluate content, which means your website needs to adapt over time, too.
Even a basic understanding of how to manage your own SEO efforts can pay off in the long run, making it easier to take quick actions to maintain your site. Taking some time to learn the fundamentals of SEO best practices and search analytics platforms is a key priority for any entrepreneur building a brand online—especially as search algorithms continue to change and evolve.
1. Do keyword research
Keyword research will help you identify the most relevant words and phrases people use when they’re searching for topics that are related to your products or services. You can use keywords in your website copy and content, which will prompt search engines to surface your web pages for searchers.
Free tools that you can connect to Squarespace, like Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools, can help you get started. You can also review your website’s keyword analytics to find out which terms are already driving visitors to your website.
2. Write effective website copy
Don’t forget to include keywords in copy throughout your website, but don't go overboard either. Focus on writing useful, helpful content for your customers first. That will allow for keywords to appear naturally anyway while supporting your SEO efforts.
Fill in your website’s metadata, and incorporate keywords in product URLs, product descriptions, page titles, blog headers, and image alt text—text that helps screen readers parse your images—to help search engines read and rank your content.
Whether your website exists to sell a product, promote your services, or showcase your portfolio, good copywriting will go a long way in helping search engines index your website.
Get help generating website copy with Squarespace AI
3. Content marketing
Content marketing is a strategy that involves publishing high-quality blogs, videos, podcasts, and other media to spark interest in your brand, establish its authority, and boost SEO. Whether you launch a blog or add descriptive copy to your landing pages, the more website content you create, the more information you’re offering search engines to understand and rank your website.
Creating quality content for SEO purposes usually involves using free SEO tools to research search queries related to your business or brand’s niche, then creating new content related to those search terms.
You can also boost your website’s SEO by using relevant search terms in your page headings, meta descriptions, and title tags, and creating internal links between your different pieces of content and web pages, sometimes referred to as on-page SEO.
4. Improve your website design
Search engines prioritize websites that offer a good user experience (UX). Websites that have faster page speeds (meaning they load quickly), that are mobile and tablet-friendly, that prioritize readability in their design, and that have clear site navigation are likely to rank over other websites.
Manage variables like page speed by avoiding overloading your website with large video and image files, and choose a website builder, like Squarespace, that is flexible and responsive to different screen sizes.
Learn how to choose the right website template
5. Build topic authority
Publish blogs and other in-depth content that signals your authority on topics related to your brand. For example, if you’re marketing your photography business, you might launch a blog to showcase your knowledge and expertise in the field. You can link to other authoritative sources in your content to signal your expertise to search engines.
As you build authority, other websites may link back to your content—a strategy called link building. More backlinks to your website signals authority and interest in your content for search engines as well. The more you position your website and brand as an authority, the more search engines will prioritize your content in search results.
6. Track your growth
It can take weeks and months to see the impact of an SEO strategy, because it also takes time for search engines to crawl your website, index it, and start surfacing it for searchers. After you make updates to your website, monitor new users and traffic sources to understand whether your SEO strategy is driving people to your website. Pay attention to metrics like bounce rate and conversion to understand whether you’re getting qualified traffic—meaning that the people finding your website are your target audience.
Learn more about how to measure your website’s traffic and performance
Things that can impact a site’s SEO
While major search engines don’t make their algorithms public, there are some factors that experts generally accept as having some impact on your website’s visibility in search engine results.
Content quality
For search engine rankings, high-quality content isn’t necessarily the most beautifully written, it’s the most helpful and relevant content for users. That means whatever’s on the page is designed to answer someone’s search query quickly and accurately.
That includes speaking to user intent—what someone wants to get out of a search. For example, someone searching “best website builder” likely wants to see a trustworthy comparison of options. Search engines are more likely to rank a neutral comparison page over comparisons from a website building company.
Relevant keywords
Including a keyword phrase that’s relevant to searchers is one way to signal that a page is speaking to user intent. But you won’t benefit from taking target keywords from a research tool and just inserting them into your content.
The idea is that if you’re speaking from experience about a topic, you’re more likely to include certain phrases in your content. You can use keyword tools to find phrases that get a lot of searches, but they need to be woven into your pages naturally.
User experience
A positive user experience includes everything from how well your site functions to how engaging your pages are. The easier your site is to navigate and use and the more tailored your content is to your ideal customer or visitor, the longer they’ll spend on the site. That sends a signal that you have a quality website.
Site traffic
There’s no definitive confirmation that how much traffic your website gets impacts your search ranking, but the visits you get via search engines can. If many people click into your site from search results and stick around, that search engine traffic sends a signal that that page is speaking to their needs.
Expertise and trustworthiness
This is harder to quantify, but think of it this way: If you’re looking for answers or buying something online, you’re more likely to trust a site or person that seems professional or experienced. Visitors taking action on your site in response to their trust in you or your business is another signal that you’re a high-quality resource for searchers.
How you earn trust depends on your audience. It might mean highlighting hands-on experience, certifications, or testimonials. A professional-looking website is another way to signal your trustworthiness.
Links to your website
Other legitimate websites linking back to your website is another way to show your site is trustworthy. You can start small by linking back to your site from your social media and other profiles and pages you own online. From there, you can develop a strategy that feels natural to your business, like sharing your site in a professional forum or local business groups.
Types of SEO
On-page: This refers to the things you can see on the web page, like images and video captions or alt text, page copy, blogs, product descriptions, and titles or page descriptions.
Off-page: This covers authority-building off of your website, like links back to your website from other trusted sources.
Technical SEO: This includes technical parts of your website’s design and structure, like your website loading times, sitemaps and tagging or how it adapts to different screen sizes.
Local SEO: As it sounds, this is more specific to small businesses with some kind of in-person presence. This makes it easier for people in your area to discover you.
Every Squarespace website template has built-in responsive design, so your website shows up well on desktop or mobile devices. Sites are designed to handle some key technical SEO needs, so you don’t have to worry about managing them.
SEO vs. Search ads
The ads you see at the top of many search results pages are pay-per-click (PPC) ads. These are a key component of search engine marketing (SEM), and brands or businesses buy placement under specific keyword results to grab valuable real estate on page one.
In comparison, the SEO strategy discussed here focuses on ranking organically in search results and earning organic traffic. Organic SEO relies on those user intent and quality content signals to attract visitors.
You can experiment with buying search ads for your own business if you have the budget. Ranking organically is extremely cost-effective, but typically requires a greater investment of time and continued effort.
This post was updated on June 13, 2024.