With the sheer number of websites out there, it can be hard for a small business to gain visibility online.
There is so much competition that it’s crucial for anyone to invest in a strong digital marketing strategy to boost their website’s search engine ranking.
In the world of search engines, Google is king. Generally speaking, when it comes to digital marketing, what Google says, goes. There are a few different techniques and strategies, most namely those within the realm of search engine optimization, that you can do to work with the Google website crawlers and slowly but surely see results.
Here are some of the best SEO tips and tricks to make your strategy really work for you.
Take a good look at your website
You’ll need to take a good, hard look at the current state of your website before you even come up with a digital marketing plan. After all, how will you know where to start when you don’t know where you stand?
There’s a few things you can look for on your website to help give you a clear understanding of what is happening:
- Is there content on your website, like blogs and marketing copy?
- Where is your traffic coming from? Does it come from social media accounts, from search engines, or a mixture of both?
- Is your HTML consistent in the back-end of your website?
- Is your contact information easily accessible and on every page?
- What does your backlink profile look like? What websites do you link to, and what other websites link to you?
- Is traffic really the issue? Or is it conversion? If you get more people coming to your website, will they buy?
Above anything else, ask yourself, “If someone asked me to show them a wonderful and successful website, would I show them mine?” If you answer “no”, then you have some work to do.
Create content and optimize keywords
One of the pillars of search engine optimization (SEO) is keyword optimization. You can’t have properly placed keywords without having good onsite content, so come up with an editorial calendar. You want to consistently share information about your product/services and industry in an easy to read, informative way.
Keyword optimization can sound overwhelming, but it is relatively easy once you get the hang of it. Simply put, a keyword placed on your website will match the text of a potential customer’s search engine query. There are plenty of free tools online that can help you determine what keywords to implement on your website. Once placed on your page, Google’s website crawlers will see that your website content is relevant to your industry, thus moving your ranking up in the search engine results.
Build links
Having a diverse backlink profile is a tried and true way to win over Google. As mentioned before, a backlink profile is the number of websites that are linking to you (inbound links) and the number of websites you link to on your own pages (outbound links). The importance of having a backlink profile is simple: the more websites in your industry you have connected to your website, the higher the Google website crawlers will rank you on their search pages.
As a part of their algorithms, Google rewards websites that have brand authority and relevance, and this is shown when others in your industry trust you and link to you. When it comes to link building, you can do this by manually reaching out to other websites, or invest in a professional who can do it for you such as Link Graph.
With these tips in mind, you’ll be on your way to building a powerful SEO strategy, and making Google happy.