The ABCs Of SEO For Credit Unions

BY JARED MILLER

Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about increasing visibility of your site in natural, unpaid searches.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is placing ads (like Google AdWords) that show up when a user searches for a particular keyword or phrase you’ve purchased. Technically SEM is an umbrella term that SEO also falls under, but oftentimes SEM is just used to represent the paid side of search engine interaction.

Why is SEO important? When someone hits the little blue magnifier at Google.com it sends bots out to search through the indexed pages to find relevant content. The pages that have the most relevant content are the ones that rise to the top of the list of unpaid search results.

We believe that effective SEO starts before your website actually goes live. In terms of backend development, you’ll want to make sure your site is built to accommodate those little searching bots.

Title tag. The title tag is what shows up in search engine organic results and it’s also what visitors to your site see in their browser. Not only will the use of keywords in title tags help you categorize the content of your pages in a way that’s meaningful to viewers, it will make you more searchable. For example, instead of using “About Us” on your credit union’s informational page, use a more specific title tag like “About XYZ Federal Credit Union.”

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