Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a process by which you build or edit your online presence so that it’s more findable or visible to search engines. After all, the Huffington Post once put it like this: the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of a Google search.
So how does that help build your reputation? Well, you want anyone searching for your company to see the good stuff first and foremost. So build that content into your marketing strategy. After all, search engine results are in many ways a much better way to spread the word about your company than paid advertising is. You probably trust your friends’ opinions on a product much more than you trust a billboard.
You’ve probably got positive reviews and excellent testimonials from your customers or clients. Do you have a page on your company’s website for those testimonials? A robust set of reviews can lead to high Google rankings, giving you two huge benefits: a boost on the search engines to go along with educating potential customers on how your product or service will benefit them.
On top of simply providing additional good reviews, you can use SEO principles to build your website itself. The way your website is structured on the level of its back-end code can help search engines find it. You’ll want to make sure pages on your company’s website are correctly and descriptively named, images are captioned correctly, and make plenty of updates when it’s appropriate. When you go to build or host your website, look at the SEO tools available from your website builder. Most include a few basic SEO tools, but some web design services include a more robust set of options so that your new website is easily found in search engine results.