Did you know that 93% of all online experiences start with a search engine? When a web user goes online to find a product, service, place, or company, they start with a search. Search engines, like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, guide web users to what they are looking for on the World Wide Web. If you wish to attract valuable leads for your small business, investing in search engine optimization (SEO) is highly recommended.
Why Is SEO Important?
If your brand, especially those with a wider target audience, does not appear on search engine results pages (SERPs), how will your customers find you? In most cases, they won’t. Your small business might just end up collecting dust at the far end of the search rankings. Even if you offer better services, products, or content, none of these will matter because you technically do not exist to your target audience.
However, before you begin optimizing your website, it’s important to know and have a good understanding of the preferred SEO type for your small business. Knowing the types of SEO will greatly help brands in creating a campaign that drives effective organic results and leads. Understanding them might just help you climb the search results in no time as well.
SEO Can Make or Break Your Business
So, if you don’t want to get left behind in the competition, buckle up and read on because we’re going to help you get to know the different SEO types and the best SEO solutions for your website.
Everything You Need to Know About the Different SEO Types
In early 2000, SEO was simple. Over the years, the whole search engine optimization process has gotten more complex. This is because as we move forward, trends and consumer needs also change. Nowadays, SEO experts have to consider hundreds of rules to satisfy the various search engine ranking factors and, at the same time, keep their web users happy.
To make it much simpler for small business owners, the SEO industry has come with different types of SEO, with each type responsible for several SEO rules. Today, we’ll break down the complicated SEO process into several smaller processes that are easier to manage and understand.
- White Hat SEO
- Black Hat SEO
- Gray Hat SEO
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- Content SEO
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White Hat SEO
All optimization techniques that follow Google’s search engine standards are referred to as white hat SEO. Although results take time to see, they are long-term and sustainable for big and small businesses alike. Furthermore, if Google’s algorithm changes, your site will not be banned or pushed down on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Overall, if done correctly, white hat SEO offers low risks and high rewards for your small business. Some common examples of white hat SEO techniques include authoring useful and relevant content after doing extensive keyword research and earning links from high-authority sites based on the merit of your on-page content, among others.
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Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is the opposite of white hat SEO in that it seeks for and exploits any flaws or weaknesses in Google’s search algorithm to improve rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs). It improves search rankings for a website by implementing unethical tactics that often violate Google search engine guidelines. Black hat SEO usually resorts to spammy or paid link-building methods, keyword stuffing, and showing different content to bots/crawlers and humans (called cloaking), among others. This type of SEO is high-risk and can get your website blacklisted or have your search rankings dropped. It only gives short-lived results, so it’s best to avoid and steer clear of it.
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Gray Hat SEO
Gray hat SEO, on the other hand, is the combination of both white hat and black hat SEO strategies. Do note that it may or may not result in your website getting blacklisted by Google. It heavily depends on how you use these tactics for your site. However, gray hat SEO is still frowned upon and can lead to worst-case scenarios. It is still a risky practice that you should steer clear of if you want to stay on the safe side of Google.
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On-Page SEO
You are probably familiar with this type of SEO. On-page SEO includes all of the things that your web users will see when they visit your business’ website. That means, the content of your website pages. On-page SEO is the process of writing high-quality content with the sole purpose of being useful to your website visitors, adding meta tags to help Google bots better understand your content, using HTML tags to highlight headings and other content elements, and checking for broken links and duplicate content/pages.Some on-page SEO techniques that are most commonly used are:
- Title tags and meta descriptions optimization
- Usage of a short URL including a primary keyword
- Publishing high-quality content
- Targeting at least one or two keywords with every blog post
- Including ALT tags that are relevant to the images you use
- Internal linking
- Putting relevant long-tail keywords wherever necessary for better search engine rankings
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Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to strategies used outside of your website to improve your search engine rankings. What makes this SEO type relevant is it tells search engines that your brand’s website is important to others on the web.
Some off-page SEO strategies you can try are:
- Working on external ranking factors like building links
- Successful social media marketing
- Having customers give you a positive review on various online forums
- Blog commenting
- Forum posting
- Influencer outreach
- Guest posting
- Broken link building
- Social networking
- Social bookmarking
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Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website for crawling and indexing. Its main goal is to ensure that search engine crawlers can crawl and index a website without any issues. For instance, if you have a slow page load, you might get penalized by the ranking algorithms causing your site to lose potential visitors. Search engines may also prioritize websites with a responsive design that works well with mobile devices.
In short, technical SEO is related to on-page SEO factors but has to do with things that go on behind the scenes.
To improve technical SEO, you might want to focus on these things:
- Find and fix all the broken internal and external links on your site.
- Find and disavow all the toxic links that are pointing to your site.
- Look for any crawl errors.
- Get rid of thin and duplicate content.
- Find and fix all the missing ALT tags, lengthy meta descriptions, and missing titles.
- Ensure your site is equipped with HTTPS and mobile-friendly.
- Make sure your site is crawlable and indexable.
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Local SEO
For local businesses, local SEO is one of the most important types of SEO. Even when many businesses now operate mostly online, thousands of them still require clients to visit their physical stores. The more quality content you present to search engines, the more likely it is to be displayed to potential local customers. Convert local leads into paying customers faster by including regions or cities in your website’s content areas, such as page titles, meta descriptions, keywords, and blogs, among others. When your customers can have a positive experience with your business, then they are more likely to tell and recommend your service or products to other potential customers.
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Content SEO
The quality of the content and how to improve it are at the heart of content SEO. A lot of people consider content SEO as a very integral SEO process as it is important in the success factor of your overall search engine optimization. The winning content SEO strategy is creating engaging and quality content that users enjoy and search engines can understand.
If you have been haphazardly creating content for your website, blindly hoping that some of the content you wrote will rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs), it’s high time to commit to more organized content SEO techniques. If you are lacking in the writing department, don’t worry, expert content writers like our team at Proweaver can help out small businesses in creating successfully optimized web content.
Things You Should Also Consider
There are plenty of updates in the search ranking algorithm being made every year. So, it’s best to also keep in mind the latest trends in the digital space. Be up-to-date on the new ranking factors and never leave the top of search results ever again.
A few things that you should also keep in mind:
- Google gives more preference to websites with more rapport.
- Page speed and page load matter to search engine rankings.
- Google is starting to improve on determining what the searcher’s intention is and what kind of content will best answer their questions.
- Local SEO is improving fast.
Excel in More Than One Preferred SEO Type
To have an SEO strategy that leads to successful outcomes, you can’t focus on just one type of SEO. Give your website the best chance at ranking higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) by utilizing the different types of SEO in conjunction with each other. A multi-faceted strategy works best. You may not need to use all these types of SEO, but you should at least be using at least two or three or even more to better optimize your website for search engines.
Key Points and Learnings to Remember
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one of the most powerful digital tools that can make brands and businesses succeed in the digital space. A well-optimized website certainly has a higher chance of appearing on top of the search rankings. As a result, making valuable leads, conversions, clicks, and revenue is much easier, thanks to good and effective SEO efforts. You have all these SEO types and SEO solutions at your disposal. Now, it’s all up to you how you’ll make use of these strategies and techniques.
If you are new to the digital marketing space and have only heard about SEO recently, then don’t worry. You don’t have to do all of these yourself. There are SEO experts like us at Proweaver who can help you optimize your website and gear it towards a successful outcome.
Our SEO Experts at Proweaver Are Here to Help
Proweaver offers not only expert help but affordable SEO services as well. We can help small businesses translate their views to profit by improving their visibility in the search results! We understand that merely having a website is not enough to become on par with major competitors. Effective strategies and techniques are also a requirement to help various brands excel in their marketing efforts. With our SEO experts, we can help small businesses with that and more!
We Care About Your Success
That is why we take the time to get to know your business, goals, mission, and target market. Then, with the help of our professional team, we will do our best to turn your digital marketing goals into a reality.
Search Engine Optimization Features You Can Expect from Us:
- On- and Off-Page Optimization
Improve your backlinking, promotion methods, social media visibility, and more!
- Business Listing Submission
Establish your website’s identity by submitting it through link-building directories.
- Original Content Creation
Invest in high-quality content creation that highlights the importance of your business in an engaging and informative manner.
- Website Audit and Analysis
Become well-guided on the different SEO errors in your website that need to be fixed or improved.
- Monthly Reporting
Be updated on your website’s progress and see for yourself how your search rankings are consistently improving.
Get in Touch with Us Today!
Proweaver has helped thousands of clients achieve success in their digital ventures. We have been making digital marketing breakthroughs for different businesses for over a decade, and we want to help you achieve your goals, too.
Reach us at +1-877-300-6564 to begin the process of making your digital marketing and SEO goals come true. We are looking forward to working with you!