SEO is important to your small business but it can sometimes seem like a concept with an unwinnable goal. Search Engine Optimization – or SEO – is vital if you want your website to stay relevant and at the top of search engine results. Staying in the top pack of results on search engines like Google drives a large amount of local customers to your small business.
Google is constantly updating their algorithms and if you don’t stay on top of these changes, your website can get lost in the crowd. Having a well-optimized site with relevant content and a great user experience is the cornerstone of SEO success.
The ultimate goal of optimization is to get more paying clients and customers for your business and increase revenue. An optimized website provides a higher quality visitor experience which turns into higher conversion rates. It’s simple: potential clients who can find you quickly and easily navigate your website, turn into paying clients.
Once you’ve identified the keywords that are critical to your business’ success, it’s important to identify how to properly use those words within your website. It’s also important to avoid using those keywords too many times. This type of avoidable mistake results in lower ranking on Google. Don’t worry – we’ll explain that and everything else you need to know about On-Page SEO so you can get started optimizing your website.
On vs Off-Page SEO
Search Engine Optimization focuses on creating optimized content for the purpose of promoting your page. SEO can be further divided into On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-Page SEO is basically how your site communicates to a search engine. This allows us to control what we are saying and how we want to position our business to the search engines. Our goal is to show up to the right searcher at the right time. We want to connect with our ideal clients. For example, on-page SEO tells search engines, like Google, where your Bankruptcy Law Firm is located, the types of bankruptcy law you do and your experience with bankruptcy law. When a search engine understands who you are and what you offer, they can recommend you to the right searcher.
Upgrading your On-Page SEO improves your inbound marketing efforts by helping you attract the right visitors to your website. Optimizing your site for search engines makes it easier for them to understand who you are and what your business does. What you’re writing about becomes clear and concise. In another example, a roofing company may specialize in a particular area of the country or type of roofing services. Providing details and keywords relating to your area of expertise will make you easy to find for the customers who are looking for your services. The organic rank of your website on search engine results pages will typically increase with improvements to On-Page SEO.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Anything you do to bolster your business’ presence on the web that’s not directly on your site is considered Off-Page SEO. This includes link building, social media engagement, or guest blogging. Off-Page SEO shows search engines that you know what you’re writing about when you have external sources to back up your content. This is critical when establishing authority and trustworthiness with search engines. For this article, we will dive deeper into on-page SEO.
On-Page SEO Tips For Higher Ranking Search Results
Ready to take your business to the next level with SEO? Follow these simple tips to create an effective strategy to increase your ranking results.
The First Step is an SEO Audit of Your Website.
It’s likely that you already have a decent amount of content on your site. Creating new content is a great way to add value and bolster profitable keywords but it’s not the first thing on the list. Performing an SEO Audit of your current site is the first step you need to take and a great way to see how your site and its content is performing now. An audit will show you which pages are performing well, which pages need a bit of cleaning up and if you’re being blocked by any search engine providers. You’ll want to optimize the content on your high traffic pages first so they can quickly gain a higher ranking. This is also when you’ll uncover technical corrections that need to be taken care of like 404-page errors, site speed issues, or a missing XML sitemap.
Add Keywords to Critical Pages
Optimizing your page for certain keywords means you need to place those words in natural locations within existing content. We want to leave breadcrumbs for Google to follow, so they see your site as authoritative. Adding relevant keywords to page titles, descriptions, headings, images titles, alt text, and URLs is important and is the most effective way to optimize with keywords. For example, if you’re running a restoration company, your site should contain keywords that you’ve identified as relevant to generating fire, water, and mold jobs. This content will provide the searcher with the information they are looking for. If you specialize in water mitigation, be sure to add keywords relating to water damage restoration in these recommended spots to boost your search engine rank.
Avoid Search Penalties
Google provides webmasters and business owners with a list of activities that violate their webmaster guidelines. Taking the wrong action on your website can result in Google enacting a manual action or penalty on your site.
Don’t hide your keywords.
Keywords should be seamlessly integrated into the text and meta data on your website. Remember, keywords are what potential clients are using to find you. Not only do you want your clients to see that you have what they need – you want the search engine to see that as well. When developing content with your ideal keywords you also want to make sure you’re keeping Google’s E-A-T score in mind.
Don’t Put Keywords Where They Don’t Belong
The goal is not to put as many keywords in as possible but to put them in where they make sense. If it doesn’t make sense to place a keyword in a particular piece of content, you might want to reconsider the entire document. If it can’t fit the keyword, the content isn’t likely speaking to your audience the way it should.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Some websites will take a keyword and just repeat it over and over again throughout their content and meta data. This is an old SEO trick and no longer works effectively, if it ever did. Needlessly repeating a keyword can damage your ranking and result in penalties. Don’t do it.
How to Promote a Happy User Experience
The user experience your potential and existing customers have on your web page is one of the most important things to consider. If your focus is promoting a smooth and user-friendly experience for all of the visitors to your website, you’ll likely be more successful. It sounds purely technical when we talk about optimizing your website with keywords for an algorithm. But the goal of search engines is to deliver the best experience possible to people searching. We know you’re a busy small business owner and may not have a lot of time for SEO. We hope we’ve shown you how it’s worth it to take a little time to learn how SEO can work for you. Don’t let fear or a lack of knowledge prevent you from using this valuable tool to bring more clients to your business. We have a lot more information we can share with you. Contact us anytime if you need help implementing these and other valuable and effective SEO tactics.
