The Switchboard team attended an exciting workshop, facilitated by Marwick Internet Marketing to learn about best practices for search engine optimization (SEO). SEO maximizes the number of visitors to a website by ensuring it appears at the top of the list on search engines. So why is it important? As an integral component of impactful digital marketing, SEO will improve your website’s traffic and ensure you’re connecting with the largest possible audience, enabling brand recognition and growth.

We want to share some of the best SEO practices we learned during the workshop:

Do: Use relevant keywords. A website that is rich in relevant keywords is an essential first step to achieving strong onsite SEO. Focus on keywords that represent what your company does and are commonly searched for. Google Trends is a great resource to find out what searched words are trending. Keep in mind that content shouldn’t just be written for search engine detection, but also to keep readers engaged.

Don’t: Cloak keywords. In the context of SEO, cloaking means hiding keywords on pages throughout your website so that search engines are more likely to list your site. We advise against this, as Google is quick to notice cloaking and will penalize your website by putting it lower down on the search list.

Do: Include quality links. Quality over quantity of links is key when improving your website’s SEO. Link to external pages and have other reputable websites link to your page when it makes sense to do so. If trusted and established websites include a link to your site, their high SEO score will benefit yours.

Don’t: Purchase spam links. This is known as Black Hat SEO. Purchasing spam links will probably help your website’s rank for a short time, but once Google finds out that the links are dead, your website will be penalized — or even banned. Being banned by Google is a fate we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy, so best avoid those spam links.

Do: Be strategic about anchor text. Use descriptive keywords or phrases in anchor links. This will provide readers and search engines with a preview as to where that link may be pointing to.

Do: Be active on social media. Frequently post quality content that is share-friendly. In addition to the traffic generated on your social channels, sharing content will also improve your website’s search ranking.

We understand that SEO can be a lot to tackle, so our expert team is here to help. If you are interested in implementing SEO on your website, send us an email at hello@switchboardpr.com.