YOU don't need to keep up on all things SEO-related. But WE do! And if your web design folks aren't keeping up on it, your website is in for a world of hurt.

The bottom line is: if your web design firm isn't keeping up on what's important in the SEO world for Google and other search engines, then you might consider talking to a different web design firm.

SEO, like most things in the technology world, is always changing. Which is why, as a Columbus Ohio website design firm, we subscribe to blogs that keep us up to speed on these issues. This blog is a summary of the excellent article we recently read on Search Engine Journal, called 18 Areas SEO Experts Must Know About.

So we'll break the article down into what we feel are the critical issues, and the good-to-know issues.

The critical SEO issues

1. On-page SEO
   This covers the critical issues of having the right Page Titles and Meta Descriptions for every page. Because basically, when Google searches for something the first things they're looking at are Page Titles and Meta Descriptions.
2. Keywords
   Never, ever guess at the keywords you use in your website. Guessing at them assures you'll be wasting your time getting your site on Google, and your readers', radar. Even seasoned SEO specialists know not to guess at this most critical of steps. Even now that "semantic search" and "search intent" are becoming more common, those features are still based on having the right keywords.
3. Link Profiles
   This is the words you use when you make links in your copy. Never use the phrase "click here" to send someone somewhere. You can see our links (above) give you a description giving you information about the content of the link's destination. And since search engines follow links, they know when you're not doing it right. Make enough of the little mistakes outlined here, and Google may penalize your site in its ranking.
4. Content Marketing
   This has been around for a couple of years. Think of it as the reason someone would want to come to your site instead of your competitor's sites. Because you have educational, engaging, and perhaps even a bit of entertaining content on your website. Content marketing is about creating regular, high quality content. Whether it’s videos, infographics (see our infographic about SEO here, and download our infographic about 7 Questions to Ask Any Web Designer here) slideshows, podcasts, and most beneficial: blog posts. (see the importance of Keywords above. Every one of your blog posts need to include your all-important keywords.

The other SEO issues

1. Local SEO
   Google knows where people search from, and thereby show results based on their locations. (Try searching for "restaurants near me" to see what we mean.) First, you need to claim your business name in Google. You should also create your profiles in Yelp and Google+ (at a minimum) and track any negative reviews. Try to address any bad reviews since social media sites have a lot of influence with your customers. See how your local listings would appear here.
2. Pay-per-click (PPC)
   If your site doesn't have good enough SEO to appear in the organic search results (where 95% of the people click) PPC gets your ads on Google in the spots shown here.
3. Guest Blogging
   This has been downplayed in the past few years because, like everything SEO-related, it was abused. But we have been contacted by a writer in California who found our site and has asked to be a guest blogger for us. This type of legitimate blogging is still important. See one of guest blogger, Ivan Serrano's, blog posts here.
4. Social Media
   This continues to be an important way to reach out to your customers, especially if you're a B2C business. This creates back links to your website that are valuable indicators to help establish your site's worthiness of being ranked well. But, like all  marketing, it has to be done well, and consistently. Which means every day, at a minimum. If you embark on this effort, you should have a professional help you, otherwise, it will fall through the cracks if you try to do it internally.

Oh, and one more thing...

And finally, as if all this wasn't enough to think about, the "quality score" of your website makes a difference in how well your website ranks. So if you have a crappy site that's not responsive and coded well, it will reflect badly on your ranking.

This is true for ranking your site both organically, a well as in the paid ad spots.

To see an educational video from Google for how the "quality score" of your website matters, check it out here.