We all know the difference Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can make to your Business’s visibility in the Online World. What you might not know is how YOU (yes, you!) can take action that will see your SEO Ranking shooting into the stratosphere.
Today, we’ll show you some of the ways you can do this for your Business – you’ll be pleasantly surprised with just how easy it can be.
1. Upload Fresh, Quality Content on a Regular Basis
It’s common knowledge in the world of Digital Marketing that Websites which haven’t seen new content in years will not be looked upon favourably by the SEO gods. A neglected Site can make your business appear disengaged from its users and ultimately discourage visitors from returning later.
Furthermore, if Search Engines such as Google don’t feel as though your Website will be offering your visitors fresh and engaging content, it will draw the conclusion that the content you’re offering won’t be as of high value to consumers as that of another Website that is constantly changing.
To ensure such conclusions aren’t reached, by both your visitors and the Search Engines, it pays to invest a bit of time in regularly updating your content. Adding regular blog posts, updating product descriptions and even uploading new images to your gallery all count as new content.
That being said, you need to ensure this content is of a high quality. Publishing low-quality content on your Site will likely see potential customers bouncing right off it very quickly, which results in your SEO rank being punished. Remember, you want your visitors to stay on your Site for as long as possible and even share your content when they see it, which will drive more organic traffic to your site.
2. Rethink your Key Terms
Key Terms are a cornerstone of every SEO Campaign ever built. In addition to the coded terms inserted into the Website itself, Keywords are also picked up on from the front end of your Website – that is, the part that the public sees. This means that regardless of whether you have an Ecommerce Store or a WordPress Site, it’s vital that relevant Keywords are included in your Site’s Copy.
You may be tempted to cast the widest net possible with broad Keywords, in the hope of attaining the highest quantity of traffic. These broad Keywords are known as ‘Trophy Keywords’, and many Business Owners hang their SEO hopes and dreams on these terms a little too heavily.
While having a few of these included in your Campaign, you need to have Keywords that are unique to your Company, as relying solely on Broad Terms increases the level of competition you’re up against by a huge amount. Carving out your niche in the Business World and reflecting this in your SEO Keywords will ensure that you have a strong base for successful inclusions of these on your Website. These Keywords can be used in your site’s Copy, Product Pages and other Publications, helping Google identify your Business as relevant to its user’s search.
3. Effective link Building
Link Building is almost as crucial as effective Keywords in any SEO Campaign. Link Building refers to the network of links that lead to pages within your Site. These links can be internal or external.
Internal links refer to hyperlinks that lead to another page within the same domain. Basically, this means that even your Site navigation menu is considered a network of Internal Links. The “architecture” of a SEO-friendly Website must have clear pathways that allow the web-crawling spiders to access and evaluate all pages of the Site. You can have the best content on the Internet and the Google spiders won’t know if some pages are not linked to!
External links, on the other hand are hyperlinks that lead to a different domain to that which houses the link. This means that if you post a link to another Site onto yours, it is considered an external link. Likewise, if another Site links to yours, this is also an external link. External links legitimise Websites in the eyes of the almighty Search Engine Spiders, as it’s thought of as other Site owners vouching for your credibility.
While internal links are very important, external links hold even more weight as they are akin to the popular vote of the Internet. As these quality external links are harder to obtain, they carry a much higher value. You can’t fake your external links though – the Spiders judge the authenticity of the Websites you link to, and vice versa.
When building external links, be careful to ensure that the Anchor Text – that is, what the Hyperlink visibly says – is descriptive, concise and relevant. Try not to lay on the Keywords too thick, as this can alert Google to potential spammy behaviour.
4. Don't get Lost in Technicalities
SEO can seem like a daunting task when you already have a Site that might not be as well Optimized as you’d like. You may initially find yourself in a scramble to better your SEO ranking and feel some anxiety about it. This approach can lead to practices such as jamming in Keywords where they aren’t needed, uploading low quality content, creating duplicate content and even paying for external links! If you’ve engaged in these practices, it will mean that you have lost focus on the whole point of SEO: to index the highest quality, most relevant web pages that are the most popular with the users.
Try adjusting your focus from pure SEO practices to simply ensuring that your Site is first and foremost as user-friendly, readable, engaging, and intuitive as it possibly can be. The technicalities such as Link Building, Meta Descriptions, Anchor Text, Site Maps etc. can easily be refined by an SEO professional.
SEO is a complex beast that can be intimidating and requires a very thorough, almost holistic approach to bolstering the overall quality of a Website. These hacks are just scratching the surface of what you can do to improve your Google Ranking. View the Google ranking as the destination, and raising your Website’s quality as the journey – neither is inherently more valuable than the other, and one cannot exist without the other. We hope we’ve given you a better idea of how to easily implement some strategies to help you along your SEO journey, and further along the pilgrimage to Small Business Success!
