If you aren’t paying close attention to how search engines interpret your content, you are missing a lot of potential. A staggering 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, according to a report by BrightEdge. This highlights the significant role search engines play in our online navigation and discovery process.
Every day, billions of searches are performed on platforms like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. If your content isn’t showing up there, then your competitor’s content is. Like it or not, if you are trying to run a business online, you need to care about SEO.
What to do with this information?
You need to write your site’s content with search engines in mind, from the beginning. If you don’t, you risk missing out on free traffic. Search engines index billions of pages of content and use complex algorithms to determine what content is displayed in response to user queries. Pay attention to how your content is written, or it will get lost in the noise.
The BrightEdge report underscores that businesses and content creators must consider the power of search engine optimization (SEO) in their digital strategy. It’s not enough to merely have an online presence; one must optimize that presence to be discoverable and accessible through search engines.
For starters, pay attention to:
- Content length: Articles need to be “beefy” enough to rank well with search engines. No shortcuts. Why? Because everybody else is writing long pieces with a high concentration of keywords. They will simply beat out shorter articles.
- Quality: It’s not just enough to be long, the content actually has to be good. That means it has to provide real value to the reader, and it can’t just be a copy / paste from some other article somewhere else. Also: you can’t just ask AI to write an article and expect that it’ll be awesome.
- Keywords: For each article you write, you should reverse engineer your approach to the content by imagining the search terms you expect people type in to find it. The stronger your content matches those search terms, the better the chances of being displayed as a result.
- Alt text for images: Images are actually pretty helpful when it comes to search engines – but only if you use them correctly. Provide quality alternative text so search engines can index your images properly.
There’s more, so much more, but the above are great places to start!
Great, you believe us. How can you tell if you are ranking well?
The easiest way is to simply search for your targeted keywords on Google. But, that’s not particularly scientific, is it?
Our recommendation is to use the Google Search Console. While it is not the most sophisticated tool out there, it is a great place for beginners to start understanding how their content is performing on Google, and the information comes directly from the source.
Wrapping up
There you have it: 68% of online experiences start with a search engine. Understanding and leveraging this insight can give businesses a significant advantage in an increasingly competitive digital landscape. By optimizing their online content for search engines, businesses can increase their visibility, reach a wider audience, and ultimately drive more traffic and conversions.
