Don’t phone a friend. Try these 4 SEO hacks to help get your website to page one of Google search!
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Search engine optimization for small business often seems like this amorphous concept that involves a host of technical applications that reside way out of the league of your average small business owner. And it is true that there are a lot of complex elements associated with website optimization. However, there are also some very practical steps business owners can take to get a real leg up on the competition that don’t require a degree in HTML programming.
These four hacks are among the most powerful onsite tools that can help increase your website’s search ranking:
1) Optimized Title and Description Tags: Often website owners don’t realize that with every page they have an opportunity to advertise their business in Google Search via title and description tags. These tags show the purpose and or function of the page and a snapshot of the information you will find on the page should you click on the link from Google Search.
Locating these tags is relatively simple in most web hosting platforms and employing a good use of keyword and category identifyiers is a great way to get the page ranked for industry searches.
Just remember that with both the title tag and the description, the first few words matter most when it comes to ranking so be sure to make good use of appropriate keywords there but don’t use keywords that don’t readily apply to the content on that page, that will get you hit with spam penalties.
2) Diverse Media: As a rule, Google interprets sites that have a variety of media available for view or download as more authoritative than those that do not.
Most sites have photos, some have videos but to be competitive, upload other media like PDF files to show Google there are more dynamic site elements available on your site. You’ll be rewarded with bonus points that push you past your competitors and garner the kind of traffic that you need to grow your business.
3) Sitemap: This sounds like a no-brainer, but many websites launch without a proper sitemap in place. A sitemap is a listing of your website’s pages and a roadmap to its architecture and tells Googles crawlers what you have and where to find it.
Without a proper sitemap, some websites run the risk that some of their pages go without being indexed–bad news.
In order for your site’s pages to be ranked they must first be indexed. And when a page is not easily found by Google’s crawlers (nested pages, for instance), they run the risk of not being crawled or indexed. Ensure all of your site’s pages are counted in the tally of your domain’s authoritative score by placing a sitemap on your site. Again, different host providers offer their customers different options for launching one. Check with yours to what options are available.
4) Brief and Less-than-Substantive Blog Posts: There is not much that hurts a website’s SEO ranking more than the ubiquitous four-line blog posts that offer little more than a link to an interesting cat video, or your favorite granola recipe (unless your business happen to be a bakery).
Content for the sake of content alone sends a powerful message to Google that your site has no intention of being authoritative at all. And short, two line paragraphs that offer nothing by way of educative knowledge about your product, service or industry only serves to throw off your HTML:Content ratio. Google calculates this ratio with every crawl and the generation of a full page of HTML (photos, graphic, background color, etc.) with very little content to balance it out screams much ado about nothing.
Save the vacation updates for your social media pages and keep testimonials on a dedicated testimonials page. Save your blog for substantive and engaging information that will help the consumer come to understand your industry, products and services and why they should choose you.