Search Engines with Colton Jung
Did you miss this month’s episode? Or maybe you’re just looking for a short memory refresher? Either way, welcome to the Spark Compass Blog! A place where we summarize the key takeaways from every episode and share some memorable behind the scenes moments.
This month’s episode featured Colton Jung, a Digital Lead Generator working for Launch Lab, who helped us explore all things search engine optimization and search engine marketing!
SEO & SEM – WHAT ARE THEY AND WHY DO THEY MATTER?
In a nutshell, SEO (aka search engine optimization) is the act of setting up a website in such a way that Google understands how its content connects with customer search queries. Lots of things play into how Google analyzes the information on your website such as content headers, meta descriptions, and relevant keywords. So understanding how SEO works is critical to the improvement and ranking of your website.
SEM, otherwise known as search engine marketing, is a supporting piece in the process of optimization. When you pay for SEM advertisements, you’re also paying to take up space in Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and other avenues. This can be a great way of ensuring your website gets displayed in front of your target audience.
Colton mentions that a rule of thumb is establishing good SEO before moving into paid SEM. Since an optimized website is the baseline (and potential first point of contact for a consumer) you want to make sure that it can be found organically and has all the content that a consumer might be looking for before you start promoting your site.
FIRST STEPS WHEN USING SEO?
Colton suggested two things everyone should know about when first starting out with SEO.
The first is to understand how title tags and meta descriptions work. These are the actual content displayed within a Google search. Since it’s often the first thing people see when a website is displayed, that makes them very important. Title tags let Google and the user know what that website link is all about. The meta description would be the supporting sub-text, a short description outlining what someone can expect to see if they click on your website link. We’ve linked some helpful articles if you want to learn more about title tags and meta descriptions.
The second step is image optimization. In short, this is the process of shrinking the file size of images on your website. This doesn’t affect the look or quality of the image, but it will improve the overall speed of your website. If your website has a slow loading speed, potential customers will return to their Google search results to try again elsewhere.
FIRST STEPS WHEN USING SEM?
Once you’re confident that your website will answer any questions potential customers might have about your business, it’s time to consider SEM. When creating paid ads, it’s important that they represent your brand, your competitive landscape, and honestly describe the product/service you’d be promoting.
There’s different layers to SEM but at the core of it, you should always represent your business in a way that is authentic to the brand.
DOES SEO GIVE IMMEDIATE RESULTS?
No! It’s a common misconception that SEO provides immediate results. SEO is an investment. It’s a long-term strategy that comes to fruition over time and requires habitual input from your end. Colton suggests following the pattern of implementation, analysis, and adjusting.
Implementation - Launch your website optimizations
Analysis - Are these changes having the desired effect? Why or why not?
Adjusting - Tweaking areas that need improvement
SEO isn’t a short-term strategy. It’s a business investment that requires constant monitoring and optimization to keep afloat in the highly competitive search engine environment.
COMMON SEO/SEM MISTAKES
Part of the learning process is making mistakes. So here’s a list of the top three most common mistakes business owners make when investing in SEO and SEM:
Automatically Generated SEO
When you use a website like Shopify or Wix, placefiller SEO is generated automatically. While this can be a great starting point, the placefiller isn’t always optimized for your business and won’t have the same result as writing it yourself. Remember that a key part of SEO is authenticity and accurate representation of your brand, and who can create customized content better than the person who knows the business best?
Insufficient or Inaccurate Content
If you don’t write detailed title tags and meta descriptions, then you run the risk of encountering this common mistake. If your website doesn’t have enough content, Google won’t be able to link it with search queries. If the information you do have is inaccurate or misleading, then you risk not being ranked at all for future searches.
Image Optimization
As we mentioned in earlier sections, not optimizing your images can drastically slow the loading speed of your website and send visitors back to the Google page.
SEO CHECKLIST FOR FIRST-TIME USERS
Throughout our conversation, Colton provided a checklist with four main elements that first-time SEO users should complete before moving on to SEM. The first task is keyword research, which we’ll discuss more in the next section. Since keywords play a massive role in SEO, it deserves an entire section all to itself.
Task number two is to organize your on-page SEO. A simplified explanation of on-page SEO is laying out your website in a way that Google can readily understand. Search engines use formatting to categorize on-page information, so the use of headers and prioritizing information is a must.
Technical SEO is the next item on the checklist. This includes optimizing image sizes, optimizing overall site performance, and more. To learn more about Technical SEO, consider reading this informative guide written by HubSpot. A large part of Technical SEO is also auditing the performance of your website to see where you’re lacking or succeeding in SEO. The guide linked to the previous sentence also talks about auditing your website for Technical SEO.
KEYWORD RESEARCH FOR SEO
If you aren’t sure where to start with researching keywords, there are free tools available to help. Colton suggests starting with Ubersuggest and Google Keyword Planner, both of which can be used without cost. To use these tools, all you need to do is input a keyword or phrase, and they will auto-generate long-tail keywords. You can use these suggestions to find new and unique ways of implementing keywords that authentically represent your business.
A general rule of thumb for keywords is to use them at least once in the copy of your website content. Keywords should relate to what people are searching for and connect honestly back to your website. The finer art of using keywords is finding ways to use them naturally instead of forcing them into your content. Keywords should be relevant but it’s equally important to find opportunities that don’t compete against massive companies who are already dominating certain keywords.
Keywords play a huge role in search query results, so sprinkling them into title tags and meta descriptions is a great way to link them back to your website content. Just make sure that if you’re promising certain information in your meta descriptions, that information should also be available on your website.
After you’ve implemented your keywords, monitor their performance. Audit their results and keep an eye out for opportunities in adding additional, more effective keywords to the mix.
SUMMARIZING SEO INTO THREE POINTS OR LESS
When asked to summarize SEO into three key points or less, here’s what Colton had to say:
Build an organic connection between your website and google search queries
SEO isn’t a short-term strategy, it needs to be implemented, analyzed, and adjusted
Don’t get into the weeds, stay focused on title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords
FINAL WORDS OF ADVICE
As for final words of advice, Colton had two additional points to add for anyone approaching SEO for the very first time. Building blogs is a great way of answering customer questions while also satisfying SEO criteria. Blog posts lead to customers organically finding their business instead of using paid ads to force it to their attention.
The second bit of advice is to spend as much time as you can learning, auditing your competitors, and remembering that SEO is a long game that requires ongoing assessment, input, and modifications.
If you want to know more, check out this episode’s video!