Search Engine Optimization: Your Human Service Agency's New Best Friend
Kenora Dagon, Intern, Grays Peak Strategies
How many times a day do you hear or use the phrase “just google it” ? Google, Yahoo and Bing have now become everybody’s best friends. It is the leading method for finding new information. Society's reliance on search engines has created a new means of marketing and business development. Clients are now primarily using the internet to find products and services. With this technological reliance brings an increased emphasis on internet presence and innovative digital marketing techniques. A strong website and traffic to your website, is essential to ensure that people who are looking for help can locate the services they need. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a new technique used to stay ahead of digital marketing trends and improve the quality of your online information. In using this technique, public service agencies can better connect with and inform citizens about services they provide. Implementing an SEO program can be exactly what your agency needs.
So what exactly does SEO mean?
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a unique tool that both small and large agencies can use to drive more customers to their website. Bing, Google, Yahoo and other major search engines have an algorithm that ranks websites based on what they believe is most relevant for their users. These search engines focus on things like keywords, title tags and meta descriptions to decide the order that websites will be displayed on their platform. This can be detrimental for an organization, as consumers are more likely to visit websites that can be found on the first or second page of the search engine sites. It also helps internally by making site more user friendly. SEO can attract new customers by bringing awareness to human service programs. Often times people do not use a service simply because they do not realize the right one exists. Search engine optimization allows the public to discover the perfect program or service offering to fit their needs.
How does SEO work?
Implementing an SEO program begins with research and analysis of your website. Studying the traffic patterns, keywords and ranking of your website helps determine where improvements can be made. Identifying keywords that are associated with your website and deciding if these words exemplify the type of product or service you provide is important during this step of the process. Finding stronger and more precise keywords can ensure you not only receive more traffic, but also relevant traffic. It is important that you are getting views from people who are actually interested in your service. Googling words that you believe are associated with your organization and seeing the first sites that pop-up can be a good initial step. By viewing your top competitors that are among the search engine rankings, you can obtain a model for a highly ranked site. After obtaining the analytics of your current site, next is developing a strategy to improve the statistics. During this step, techniques such as website redesign or creating new or consolidated landing pages, are implemented. The focus here is to provide a means for the public to easily find and access your services.
Search Engine Optimization can be an effective tool to ensure your agency is connecting with the people is was created to serve. Grays Peak Strategies can offer a full range of SEO services. Contact us today, and we can discuss your goals, and create an SEO approach that’s right for you.