SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization) is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
How is that relevant to your business website?
Driving traffic, or increasing the number of visitors your website for your business has means more potential customers viewing what you have to offer. This is great news for those who struggle marketing themselves and their small business. It essentially means that if you structure your website properly and follow a loose guideline for SEO, you could potentially increase your customer base!
So how does a business maximize their website for SEO?
First and foremost we need to ensure that your website is accessible––and while being accessible for those who are hard of hearing or blind is absolutely necessary, we mean for search engines. This could be a variety of things, and usually depends on the individual website (which is why hiring someone or running your website through an SEO search engine can be helpful) but in general it comes down to a few things.
1.Use Descriptive URLs
Every page on your website has an option (usually on the backend) to add a descriptive term that will reflect in the URL, such as www.website/home.com. These descriptions will appear on those pages, and allow any search engine to easily identify what that page of your website contains and suggest it when appropriate.
If you have not gone to the editor side of your website to do so, most web pages will do a decent job of making assumptions. To test this, simply navigate your website from the home page to another page and read the URL. If it give some long sentence or random code, it might be time to clean the backend of your webpage up a bit for SEO.
2. Keep Your Site Clean
It’s important to ensure your website is user-friendly as well as SEO -friendly. Make sure you don’t have a lot of the same thing on multiple pages or some “crawlers” (a system Google uses to comb through results and find the best match) might skip over those.
Keeping your site clean also means keeping it up-to-date, whether that is regularly editing outdated information or contributing to a blog. This indicates it is a live and well-used site, rather than a site that needs to be archived from search results.
If you have images on your site, check their size and quality to avoid blurry images or slow load times.
3. Be Consistent
If your business name is Bears Be Bears, for example, be sure your website reflects that name. SEO works best when the terms and phrases you use to represent your business are consistent across the board. If half of your website is dedicated to bear figurines but the other half is dedicated to WWE matches in your living room, it might be confusing not just for search engines but for the people trying to find the best results as well. Keep your site consistent with your business and brand.
4. Promote Your Site
Search engines love when websites and links are shared in multiple places (think social media or a guest blog post on another web page). This essentially tells the search engine that your website is reliable and people utilize it. Having your site linked in other places is a great way to reflect your expertise and necessity while promoting yourself.
This can even include having an up-to-date Google Business page, where your website, logo, photos, and description are included. Not only does this help your SEO, it can boost trust with potential customers who are investigating you.
While these tips can be helpful, they are certainly not all-inclusive, as SEO is constantly evolving and changing as the internet does. Here are some great resources if you want to learn more about SEO and how it can effect your business website.
Of course we are here if you need support! Schedule a free consultation today to see if we would be a good fit for supporting your business.
Comments