HAZEL DIGITAL MEDIA

Your website may be a perfect 10, but if nobody can find it, there's a chance it's not reaching its full potential. These days, one of the most important rules of having a website is: make sure it gets along nicely with the search engines.

You'll thank yourself in the long run if you take a little time now to familiarize yourself with some basic concepts. Keeping them in mind as you begin to draft the content will ensure that you and your website live in perfect harmony with Google and co.

Keywords

It goes without saying, these are the basic building blocks of SEO. A perfect keyword is one that is specific to you and your industry – something that has high search volume and low competition. Keep this in mind as the pages of your site begin to materialize.

Titles and headers are important places for strong keywords, so name your pages after them, and then design the content around that. With the hierarchy of your website structured around these keywords, Google will be much more able to slingshot you toward potential customers.

There are plenty of great keyword research tools available out there. You don't have to launch a full-blown SEO campaign just yet, but laying down a solid foundation at the beginning will make it infinitely easier to do so later on. Furthermore, if your website is born with a nice, tidy structure, the spiders of search engines will have no trouble navigating and indexing, and that's always a good thing.

Links Back

Another fundamental SEO tactic is fostering links from other websites to yours. If another website has a link on their page that travels to you, the search engines see that as a vote. The more votes you have, the more popular your site is. Just like prom, right?

The best way to get people linking back to your site is to have useful, insightful content. Also consider any products your business uses, or other companies you work alongside: if you have room to link to them on your website, they will likely return the favor

In the end, the best way to get websites and spiders talking about your website is through a blog. The search engines notice when you're consistently producing fresh content (especially if it's keyword-heavy). Plus it allows more opportunities for reaching out to people, and potentially getting some of those precious links back.

Social Media

There's a lot to be said about social media as an appendage of your marketing efforts. All we'll say today is that you musn't neglect this aspect of your online presence. The idea of keeping up a blog anda social media account sounds exhausting, but a little bit goes a long way.

Whether Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, just make sure that your keywords and content are congruent. This emerging aspect of SEO is likely to become increasingly important over the years. Try to sync your blog and your social media, and get a conversation going. For the most part, any hype you can foster out there in cyberspace will be good for you.

Always remember that your website and your SEO endeavors are all part of a cohesive effort to expand your brand. Your online presence should be a perfect extension of your marketing strategy. Together, we can cultivate the ultimate web persona for you and your company.