If you are a business owner, you’ve very likely heard that SEO is crucial for being seen on Google. What exactly is SEO you may ask? It’s really a lot simpler than it seems. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s used to rank your site on the pages of Google Search. In the following article, we’ll walk you through what search engine optimization is, what can affect it, and how to improve it. Let’s crack into it!

What is Search Engine Optimization?

When someone inputs a search into Google, there are hundreds of thousands of results that come up. The top few spots are typically paid-for advertisements, denoted by “AD” in the left-hand corner of the text. The sites that are displayed under the paid ads are determined by ranking search engine optimization. Basically, the more keywords Google can find, the more sites that link back to your site, and the more attractive your landing pages are, the higher Google will rank you. Search engine optimization is steadily improving. According to Impact , 82% of marketers report that search engine optimization is becoming much more effective. 42% believe that the increase in effectiveness is significant. Search engine optimization is a great way for companies to boost their Google PageRank without having to pay for advertisements. Instead, with some SEO blogging, website edits, and other small changes, your business can start appearing on the first few pages at no cost to you.

What Things Affect Your Google PageRank?

There is no way to easily define what exactly affects your Google PageRank. The reason for that is the ever-growing complexity of Google’s algorithm. To keep things as simple as we can, we’re going to break down some of the most important factors that are known.

1. The first thing that greatly affects your search engine optimization is backlinks. These SEO backlinks are links to your website or web pages located on other websites. Now, you can’t just get any site to backlink to you and expect your Google PageRank to increase. SEO backlinks are also judged by their quality, meaning that it is most important to get your site linked on credible and relevant websites. The more times you can get yourself linked in other people’s or companies’ blogs, the more your Google PageRank should increase. Of, course, it isn’t exactly that cut and dry, but generally speaking SEO backlinks work.

2. The second common method employed to increase search engine optimization is blogging. Improving SEO is why so many businesses are choosing to write blogs. SEO blogging is a great way to boost your Google PageRank because you can do it often and include a lot of keywords. These SEO keywords are picked up by Google and influence the rank of your web page. Much like backlinks, the keywords you choose must be relevant to your business for them to count. There are also rules about how you can use SEO keywords. In some instances, they can actually decrease your Google PageRank. For instance, if you write blogs and throw your SEO keywords in willy nilly, Google will decrease your ranking. Likewise, if you don’t use your keywords organically, include them as singular entities without incorporating them into a sentence, or try to hide them by using white text on a white background, you will get negatively ranked, sometimes to the point of not being ranked at all. SEO keywords, when used properly, are great for boosting your search engine optimization score, though it will still take a while to see any changes.

3. The third and final factor affecting search engine optimization that we want to go over is content on your site. As we mentioned, Google looks at the quality of any and all landing pages your business has. Bots are looking for keywords, layout, colors, interaction rate, time spent on the page, page views, etc. Therefore, it is crucial to have a well-designed site if you want to see your Google PageRank improve.

How Can You Improve Your PageRank?

Long story short, if you want to improve your Google PageRank you should make sure you are keeping the points we’ve discussed in mind. We will have a new blog up next week diving deeply into detail about how to improve your Google PageRank. Make sure to check back for that if you want to learn some of our tricks for using SEO to it’s fullest potential.

If search engine optimization and improving your search ranking seems time-consuming and daunting, contact BusySeed for some help! Our team writes over 50 blogs every single month and we make sure to use keywords relevant to your business. We are proud of our SEO marketing capabilities and we’d love to be able to help your business grow. Call us today to get started at (888) 353-1484.