SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. You engage in SEO when you attempt to get a page to rank higher in a search engine’s SERPs (search engine results pages), with the ultimate goal being to increase organic (unpaid) traffic to that page.

On-page SEO refers to tactics utilized on or within a page to assist it in ranking higher in the search engine. On-page SEO includes both content and the HTML source code of a page (image optimization, keyword optimization, Schema markup, and more), but not external links and other external signals.

Great question! Keyword research helps you determine the keywords for which you should optimize the current and future pages of your site. For example: if your new small business sells employee scheduling software, but you discover that “employee scheduling tool” has higher search volume and lower competition than “employee scheduling software,” you might want to change the copy on your website to reflect that. Keyword research is a way of determining which queries people are entering into search engines so you can publish pages that will show up as results for those queries.

Yes! Each piece of new content you create is another opportunity to rank for a target keyword related to your business. The more high-quality blogs you create, the wider the net you cast across your industry’s organic search results.

Think about it this way: the internet is made up of two things—content, and links between content. When search engines first started indexing web pages, they needed a way to determine which pages were most relevant to certain queries—a system of ranking. The quality and number of backlinks pointing to a page immediately became a factor in determining that page’s rank. Backlinks represent a vote of confidence from one site to another. The more quality backlinks your page earns, the more valuable it is in the eyes of the search engine, and the more likely it is to achieve a high ranking.

A website’s domain authority corresponds directly to its ability to rank in the search engine. Conceptually, you can think of domain authority as an extension of link equity. If a page’s link equity is determined by the number and quality of its links, then a site’s domain authority is determined by the link equity of all its pages.

Yes! If you’re not familiar with HTTPS, it is essentially a more secure form of HTTP. Look up at the URL of this page. See the “https” at the beginning, and the word “Secure” to the left of it? Google looks on pages like these favorably. Not only does it index HTTPS pages first, but it also recognizes HTTPS as a ranking signal. HTTPS is also faster than HTTP, which can affect click-through rate. So yes, changing to HTTPS should positively impact your rankings!

The goals, project scope and budget for search engine optimization and growing a web presence can vary significantly for different businesses. However, the need and importance for having an optimized web presence will only grow over time. At the end of the day, if your customers and potential customers are not finding you on the Internet they are finding your competitors.

Local Search is the use of a geographic tag, such as a state, city, or zip code as part of the search phrase when performing a search. Local search is an efficient way for search engines to deliver relevant, results for businesses, products and services within a limited geographic area. An example of a local search, also referred to as Local SEO, would be entering “reverse mortgage ohio” into the search box on Google, Bing or Yahoo.

Within a few days of doing SEO, you might see some initial results. Maybe you will rank on Google for some very obscure keywords. After a month, you will see even more and a few months after that even more. Remember, SEO is a process, not an event.