When SEO Matters — And When It Doesn’t

New to search engine optimization?

Find out when you should — and shouldn’t — use SEO techniques. 

Search engine optimization is a complicated and, let’s say it, slightly intimidating topic for non-techie business owners. 

And that’s okay; as we pointed out in an earlier post, you’re most likely best off hiring an SEO professional than attempting to navigate the intricate highways and byways of SEO by yourself.

That being said, you should still have a basic understanding of how SEO works and when you need to use it. In our last post, we discussed what SEO does (controls where an item appears on a list of search engine results) and how it works with written content. Today, we’re going to talk about when to use SEO techniques. The answers might surprise you.

The one question you need to answer about SEO

Here’s the most important question you’ll ever need to ask about SEO:

Will people search for this information?

If the answer is yes — you’d expect people to pull up Google and use it to answer a question about your business — then your content needs to be optimized.

If the answer is no — you or your client would contact each other directly — then don’t worry about SEO.

Most of what you post online for the general public (individual web pages, blog posts, help documentation, etc.) will fall into the "needs-SEO" category. Things like emails, chat conversations, messages, and all other party-to-party communications don’t need to be optimized.

Notice that individual web pages need to have good SEO. Admittedly, when we think of using a search engine, we default to thinking that every single person is going to land on a home page (the "front page" of your website) or a landing page (a page specifically designed for a single service or product).

But don’t forget that your other pages contain important information. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be there. So don’t let good SEO practices stop after the first couple of pages on your website.Now let’s talk about the white elephant in the SEO room: social media. 

Do I need to use SEO on social media?

How social media relates to your website’s SEO ranking is debated, complicated, and more than a little nebulous. But using sound SEO techniques on your social media sites is always a good idea for two reasons:

1. It will indirectly increase your website’s traffic.
2. People search for information on social media sites too. Using SEO will help your information stand out.

We don’t have time to go into the ins and outs of social media SEO here, but you can find additional articles here. Remember, you can always come to Techsperts with your SEO and social media questions!