Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, has one goal: to get your website to show up in internet searches. SEO is a catch-all term for anything that helps put your website at the top of the search results. This is also called your ranking.
There are many ways to improve your SEO. Some of them are related to the content on your pages, while others have to do with how credible your site appears to the search engine.
In this knowledgebase, we will be citing statistics related to Google and referring to them as our search engine unless otherwise noted. As the number one search engine worldwide, Google sees over 78% of all search traffic. (That number is even higher for English-speaking countries; the second largest search engine, Baidu, is only available in Chinese.) Google sees over 6 billion searches per day.
The Importance of SEO
If your website appears at the very top of the search results, people are more likely to visit your website. Research shows that in 2021, 75% of Google searches never move past the first page of results, and more than two-thirds of all clicks go to the top 5 results. Separately, about 70% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. That means that 7 out of every 10 times someone opens a web browser, their first action is to conduct a search before making their way to a website.
Increasingly, people are also using search engines to look into places before they visit them in person. From 2017-2019, the growth of “near me” searches grew by 200%. From finding restaurants to fine jewelry stores, Google has become a trusted recommendation tool.
Improving Your SEO
There are many ways to improve your SEO, which the other articles in this guide go more in-depth on. On a high level, your site content and site credibility are both things that influence the search algorithm. Those factors determines what the most relevant results are for each search.
Site Content
It is hopefully fairly obvious that the content on your site needs to match the searches you would like to rank for. If you are hoping people will find your site by searching “antique silver jewelry” then you should have a page dedicated to that topic, whether it’s a blog post, a landing page, or an entire page of inventory. The more places on your site that those keywords appear, the more likely Google is to suggest you to the searcher. We’ll get more into site content best practices in other pages within this section.
Site Credibility
One of the factors that Google’s algorithm looks at when deciding how to rank websites is the site credibility (sometimes called site authority). The algorithm asks the question, “How likely are people to find what they are looking for by visiting this site?” Remember that Google and other search engines do not care about your website; they are trying to provide the best possible experience for the user. In turn, your goal is to provide search engines with a trustworthy source of relevant content. The algorithms favor things that demonstrate the best user experiences over time. Other things that contribute to your ranking include the length of time you have held your domain name, the amount of content on your site, the depth of content on your site (think 2500 words vs 500), and the relevance of the information in relation to the search.
Another factor Google considers is your bounce rate. Your bounce rate is calculated by how many people only view one page on your site before they leave. If 50% of your visitors leave after only looking at one page, your bounce rate is 50%. Things that cause searchers to leave your site quickly, such as broken links, irrelevant information, and unresponsive or slow-loading sites, contribute to a high bounce rate. (You’re going for a golf score here!) Conversely, if a searcher finds information they are looking for, they are more likely to click on other pages within your website. You can calculate both your overall bounce rate as well as rates for individual pages, such as your Home page or Contact page. Typical bounce rates are between 25-50%. If your bounce rate starts to hover around 75% or more, your website likely needs some updates.
Google also looks at the length of time users spend on your site and how many users are interacting with your site. The higher the volume of users clicking on your website, the more likely Google is to recommend you for other searchers. This snowball effect can really help in the long-term, and it is also one of the reasons that you won’t see the effects of your efforts overnight. SEO strategies are ongoing processes that take time to build up results.
SEO for Jewelers
Improving your Website’s SEO
After reading this page, see if you can answer the following questions:
- What does SEO stand for?
- What is the goal of SEO?
- Why is SEO an important concept?
- Can you name three things that will improve your SEO?
Use these action items to improve your site’s SEO:
- Conduct an audit of your website’s current average rankings
- Figure out your average bounce rate, and come up with a plan to improve it.
- Read through the remaining parts of this section and implement the action items that make the most sense for your business