SEO Data Closeup from Google Search Console
What does SEO mean to you? A nightmare? The greatest marketing tool since TV? Search Engine Optimization. For many who are responsible for a company's web presence, it's a bit like gravity: you know it's there, and you know you need it, but please don't ask for an explanation! This page isn't so much of a how-to SEO—it's more of an overview of the intricacies of communicating with search engines, to give you a better idea of its complexity. Read our related blog for background on Utilizing Technology as a Marketing Tool.
We're all familiar with Internet searches. We've done them hundreds, thousands of times. We know the difference between a successful search, when we find relevant content, and a less successful one when we don't, by looking at the content we find. And we use our brains to judge the relevance. A search engine scans Internet content constantly, collecting information non-stop so that when people look for information on the web, the search engine can present reliable information. Let's look at how search engines look for and judge the relevance of information.
Using Analytics for Search Engine Optimization
For a search engine (SE) to know your info is there, your content has to be understood by the search engine, which does not speak our language—computers have their own language. For us, it looks a little like making a picture with words.
Google Search Console on a laptop.
Your event can hide like a needle in a haystack on the vast World Wide Web if the structure of the content is not presented correctly. Following is a brief explanation of some of the elements (or, shall we say parts of speech?) of the language of SEO. You've probably heard many of these terms.
A Title Tag tells the SE the title of your web page in a specific format that helps the SE categorize it. While we are used to seeing titles in the arts that might have a non-obvious flair (Dylan's Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 comes to mind), SEs don't possess artistic nuance. They will judge all content based on the title first.
Search engines use content to determine how to rank a page in terms of relevancy. Key Phrases are the main words that you want your content associated with. It may sound simple but you're trying to guess how people will search for your event—what exact phrases or wording they'll use. The combinations are as numerous as words that describe your event.
Back Links are the connections you make within your content to increase relevancy (and ultimately your search ranking). Links need to cross-connect with other pages of your content in a way that makes sense to people—or else they won't click on them, and you won't get cross-page traffic.
Let's say your web page gets lots of clicks. That is what establishes your Domain Authority – or, the page's popularity on the web. SEs make the assumption that popular pages have more valuable content, therefore they earn a higher domain authority than less popular pages. Linking your website to another website with higher domain authority helps boost your own ranking.
The technical structure of a website is also very important. Technical SEO issues like broken links, duplicate content, content within the page that doesn't make sense, messy code, etc. will hurt your ranking. Content needs to be presented with a clean technical structure for the best optimization.
60% of people use the web from a phone or other mobile device. Obviously, there is a big size difference between a monitor and a phone. Content needs to be adaptable to devices large and small for superior optimization. You are ranked higher when you’re website is Mobile Friendly.
There is a lot to successful SEO! But when you post events on the CultureOwl calendar, we take care of all of that for you. We've engineered our site with all the SEO language and coding built right in. Upload using our guidelines for photos and text, and your event is automatically optimized for search engines through our platform. It's just that simple. Contact us to learn more.
