What Determines the SEO Value of Your Website?

Search Engine Optimization, or “SEO” for short, is the process of improving the ranking of a website on search engines like Google. The higher the ranking, the more likely potential customers are to find the website. So, what determines the SEO value of a website? Read on to find out!
1. The Quality of Your Content
One of the most important factors in determining the SEO value of your website is the quality of your content. Google’s algorithms are designed to surface the best, most relevant results for a given query—so if your content is well-written and relevant to what people are searching for, you’re more likely to rank highly. On the other hand, if your content is poorly written and/or not relevant to what people are searching for, you’re unlikely to rank highly. So make sure that your content is high-quality and relevant to what people are actually searching for!

When we use the term “content” we’re referring to any material that you put on your website. It could be written page copy, videos, photos, infographics, or blog articles.  And when we use the term “quality” we’re not so much talking about the aesthetic qualities of the copy (though that’s an important part of the user experience) as the relevancy of the content to what the user visiting the site is expecting to get.  For example, as a content creation agency, it would not be helpful to have blog articles sharing our favorite comfort food recipes on this website.  People are coming here to get help with their content needs, not their comfort food needs.

2. The Quantity of Your Content
In addition to quality, another important factor in determining the SEO value of your website is quantity. Basically, the more content you have on your site, the greater chance there is that one (or more) of your pages will be relevant to what someone is searching for. So if you want to improve your SEO value, make sure to add new content to your site on a regular basis! Just make sure that it’s high-quality content—as we mentioned above, Google’s algorithms are designed to surface the best results, so don’t waste your time (and ours!) creating low-quality content just for the sake of quantity.

What should the frequency of new content distribution be?  Opinion on this vary, but we tell our clients to put something new on their website at least once a month.

3. The Number and Quality of Incoming Links
Another factor that determines SEO value is the number and quality of incoming links—that is, links from other websites pointing to yours. In general, the more incoming links you have, and the higher-quality those incoming links are, the better. Google looks at incoming links as votes of confidence—so if lots of other websites are linking to yours, it must mean that you have something good going on! However, beware of low-quality or spammy links—Google can penalize your site if it thinks you’re trying to game their system by buying or otherwise artificially acquiring links. So focus on building relationships and creating great content—the natural backlinks will follow.

So there you have it—three factors that determine the SEO value of your website! By creating high-quality content, adding new content regularly, and building relationships with other websites (all while avoiding any spammy shortcuts), you can help improve your website’s ranking on search engines like Google—which means more potential customers will be able to find you easily when they’re looking for what you offer.  If you understand the value of having quality content on your website, but you just don’t have the time to produce it yourself, reach out to us and let’s talk about how we might be able to help you out.  We love creating content that showcases our clients’ passions and expertise.