Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a term used to describe the process of getting visitors to your website by ensuring it appears high in the results of search engines. A strong SEO strategy can put you right in front of potential customers, even if you’re a brand-new business. In this guide, we’ve put together 10 things you can do to improve your search engine rankings.
It’s important to remember SEO is a long-term process. While implementing these steps can bump you up in Google and other search engines quickly, staying at the top requires some maintenance.
Take these steps one at a time and remember that your primary goal is connecting with people – not search engine robots.
Know your audience and think like they think
It’s crucial to know your audience before trying to implement SEO practices. When you try to reach an audience that’s too broad or generic, you can waste a lot of time and resources on the wrong people.
For example, if you have a restaurant, you might first think your audience is “everyone who eats,” but you don’t need everyone who eats to visit your restaurant. You just need the people who want your food, customer service, and atmosphere. A fine dining establishment knows that budget-friendly customers won’t be visiting their restaurant, so they don’t try to reach them.Â
Let’s say you own a pizza restaurant near a college. The keywords you choose to promote to college students will be the ones you want to use most. For example, their search history would look more like “cheap dinner near me” instead of “quiet atmosphere reservations”.
With your target audience in mind, you can begin establishing a bank of keywords to include on your website and other content. One trick is to search for a relevant keyword phrase, scroll to the very bottom of the results page, and see what other keyword phrases are coming up, too.
Conduct Competitor research
An easy way to get started with SEO is to assess what’s already performing well by your competitors.
Take a look at your closest competitors and study their search results and websites. The goal isn’t to copy their content – that will do you more harm than good. You just want to get an overview of what they’re doing…and do it better.
There are several SEO tools that can help with the following, but here’s a rundown of what to analyze:
- Keywords: Determine what competitor sites are ranking for
- Backlinks: Analyze how they’re establishing authority through backlinks, which is a term used to describe other websites linking back to their website
- Reviews: Look at negative reviews to see what customers are complaining about
Throughout this analysis, look for gaps to fill. What content, resources, and services can you provide that your competitor is missing?
Follow a basic SEO checklist
Although ranking in search engines is a long-term process, you’ll want to make sure your website is optimized first before implementing content strategies or other SEO practices.
A common SEO checklist for your website includes adding:
- A custom domain: Registering your own URL enhances your credibility, and search engines like sites they feel are trustworthy and legitimate
- A site title: Name of your business
- A site description: Short description of what your business does
- SEO descriptions: Summary of content on each page
- Page titles: How your page title appears in the browser tab and when shared
Continue with a thorough optimization checklist
Once you’ve followed the initial SEO checklist, you can optimize other parts of your website.
Consider implementing these items:
- Browser icon: This shows a small logo or relevant image in the browser tab instead of the default gray box
- Social sharing: Set one relevant image to display when your site is shared on social media. You can also set images for each individual page.
- Custom 404: Customizing your 404 page to direct them back to your home page or somewhere else on your website encourages visitors not to leave your site.
- Location: Add your address to your website to show up in “near me” searches
- Use Google Search Console: By verifying Google Search Console you can see how visitors are finding your website through search
- Index: After setting up Google Search Console you can request that Google index your site which allows Google bots to crawl your site for updated content to pull into search results
- Obtain SSL: SSL certificates make your website secure, protecting it from hackers. SSL certificates are often included with your domain or hosting platform, but sometimes need to be enabled in the settings. Websites without SSL are vulnerable to be penalized.
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Create your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business profile gives customers directions to your location, the ability to call you or visit your website, and even order online. It also allows your business to show up in Google Maps.
Setting up your Google Business Profile is simple, but you’ll want to be thorough. Claim and verify your listing, then add relevant information, photos, hours, and categories.
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Utilize Local Business Directories &Â Listings
Find local business directories and listings in your area and add your company to as many as possible. When your address and phone numbers are paired with your business name in several areas online, you become more relevant to search engines.
Search engines like giving people clear, trustworthy information. If your address is associated with old businesses or other websites, it’s considered confusing and less credible.
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Build Local Authority with Links
This SEO practice is more for maintenance, but by having other local businesses link to your website, you’re showing search engines you can be trusted. This also allows you to get in front of more people that are already looking at those websites.
For example, if your local newspaper or magazine includes a link to your website within a feature article, readers can go straight to your website and learn more about your business. This what’s known as a backlink.
When traffic comes to your site through other established avenues, the search engines have more reason to rank your business higher.
Reviews
Reviews are the online version of word of mouth. While you might be climbing the ranks with the SEO practices so far, keep in mind that people are the ones buying at the end of the day. And purchasing behavior is often affected by reviews.
Ask customers for reviews and respond to all of them, positive and negative, from your Google Business Profile. This shows customers that you care about their experience and are listening to their feedback. Thanking those who post positive reviews leads to repeat customers, and responding to negative reviews gives you an opportunity to resolve concerns.
Organic Content
Once you’ve implemented your foundational SEO best practices, you’re ready to think about ongoing SEO maintenance through organic content.
Your organic content strategy can include blogs, videos, articles to local outlets, and more. You will want your content to include your main keywords and provide useful information to potential customers.
Answering commonly asked questions is a great place to start and help customers decide you’re the right business for them based on the value you’ve shared. As you become a trusted authority through organic content, search engines will take notice and want to send more people to your website.
Paid ads
Paid ads are a great way to speed up your lead generation and get quicker results. SEO is still a long-term process, but for some businesses, ads work great for capturing attention at the top of the page. Marketing with the strategy to rank higher in search engine results is known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
The key here is to set a budget that works for you and test different search campaigns. From there you can see the cost per lead and determine if ads are worth it. You also want to stick to what works well. If an ad is performing well, run more ads like it to keep the momentum going. Â
With these SEO tips, you’re well on your way to ranking higher in search results. Remember it’s a long-term process, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t jump to the first page right away. Give it time and track your results.
Do you have questions about how to improve your website’s SEO and increase traffic? Any tips on what has worked for you? Leave your thoughts below in the comment section to learn from and help the Community!
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