The Importance of SEO For The Holidays

SEO, SEO, SEO. People throw the word around constantly with little real knowledge of what it means or why it’s so important. Today, Mountain Air Marketing wants to talk briefly about SEO and it’s relevance—especially as the holiday months approach.

What is SEO and why should I prepare for the Holidays!?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is basically the ballpark term for all of the methods used to help Google or other search engines pick out your site from the millions and millions of other sites out there and choosing where to rank. Finding something online can be like looking for a needle in a haystack, but SEO can a very powerful magnet that helps pull out what you’re looking for faster.

Google and other search engines use highly sophisticated robots (a.k.a. bots, spiders, etc.) to constantly visit, index, and file the billions of pages of content on the world wide web. When these robot spiders find a site that is easy to navigate and determine its purpose, as well as something that is high quality and users seem to enjoy, they store that away as a useful site and will recommend it more and more.

It is the most useful, high quality, and SEO-friendly sites that become the top results in organic search results. (A paid search result is another topic entirely). The bots use extremely complex and secretive algorithms to determine what makes up a good site or not.

When you use good SEO practices, then people searching for terms in your area of expertise will find you and you will appear at the top of search results. In 2014, a study from Conductor said that 64% of all web traffic comes from organic search. That was now 3 years ago and has only grown from there. Pretty significant! Potential customers searching on the web usually do not look past the 2^nd page of a search tool, as they trust businesses that appear first. So it’s vital that you appear as one of the top organic search choices for your service. Think about it: Do you ever go past the 1^st page of a Google search?

If it sounds sort of complicated, it is! Luckily, there are people whose job it is to constantly know the most they can about SEO, algorithms, and yes—these spider bot things—so that most people don’t have to worry about it.

Good SEO Practices = Thinking AHEAD!

Another thing to think about is that with the holidays coming up, it takes search engines and their little robots about 2-3 months to start picking up the SEO for your site and correctly categorizing it and pushing it to their searches. So if you have a business that will depend on the holiday rush, then you need to start thinking about Search Engine Optimization NOW before it’s too late.

Using best SEO practices basically becomes a map that helps the search spiders determine exactly who you are, what kind of business you’re running, where you’re located, etc. And you can’t simply add a bunch of keywords into the back of you site now, like you used to do in the old says. The robots have gotten smarter than ever, and the algorithms they use are searching for quality sites that users enjoy and find truly valuable. Quality is truly key.

For example, building a strong site architecture with very concise and clear navigation when you first build a website is really important step for SEO. If your site doesn’t have truly appropriate tag titles, descriptions, and quality informational content, then Google can’t figure out what your site is. You can’t just have a website and some vague list of services. You need pages with particular links and words that call out specific skills or services in order to be most effective. You need high quality content that makes a relevant history on your site. You need pages of content that really unpack what you have to offer in SEO-friendly terms.

We hope this brief introduction can give you a look into the complicated world of SEO. Please reach out to Mountain Air Marketing with any questions or thoughts. We’re always here to help you win over those pesky search bots!