When you Google your business’ services, does your listing come up in the search results? Do your competitors?
This is something all business owners struggle with, especially if you are just starting out. You have your website, you’ve made a Google My Business profile.. now how the hell do you get your business to show up at the top of the results page?!
I won’t say it’s easy. Because it’s a climb to get to the top.. just ask Miley Cyrus. It takes consistent work and a lot of details to make sure Your Website and Search Engines are on speaking terms. And, that all your information is correct and up to date.
Here are 6 Easy Actions You Can do on Your Own to Improve your SEO right now.
1. Post photos and monthly updates to your Google My Business profile
Setting up a GMB profile is a free tool businesses of all sizes can use to verify their listing and information – your location, what areas you serve, menu items, contact info, and more. Think of this like another form of social media we can use to get out updated pictures, promotions, events, and seasonal changes.
Updating content on this platform and many others (Digital Savvy manages up to 70 different industry-specific directory sites), you’re able to keep your customers up to date and this shows Google that you care about your listing and how your customers find you. The more visitors interact with your profile, the more Google is going to show you in the results!
2. Reduce file sizes and increase the overall speed of your website
There are tons of great applications and plugins you can use to “smush” your existing photos on your site. Some cost a monthly fee, and some are free. We have access to an arsenal of solutions to help increase your page speed so you do not lose any potential customers.
Don’t you hate it when you click on a new business in the search results of Google and their site takes too long to load so you just leave? You are not alone.
Sources: LoadStorm, Econsultancy
A high bounce-rate tells the search engine that the user is not finding what it needs from the site and the search listings will ultimately suffer.
3. Make sure all pages have meta tags & descriptions
OK you’ve heard me talk about the communication between Google and your website a few times so far.. well that is all through meta tags and descriptions. These are basically a summary of your content for your customers to view on Google. They do not appear on the front-end of the page, but rather in the code of the page itself.
Adding these tags, submitting your sitemap to Google and creating Headline tags to go along with your top services will help provide a snipped of what you provide and will break down each page in the search results. See below for an example!
4. Add Blog Content that solves a current problem from a potential customer
We want to create an incentive for a potential client to click on an article when the search for a pain point. For example, if they are looking to improve their health, we will show them 3 ways to get healthier in the next 30 days.
Your business is the answer to all of their problems. Provide them with positive content that will help them answer any questions they may have. You can also add up to 10 tags to your blog post – think of these as keywords people would search for to find your blog!
pro-tip: people love to see numbers in blog titles. It seems like 3 easy steps is an achievable goal for many people, and it’s a way to invite readers to find out what those steps are. Which is the reason you may be reading this post now..
5. Create outbound links to other websites with high authority
My favorite way to link to other sites is through a media page. Have you ever been featured on the news or in an article? Win any awards? Create a post or link on your site to this content.
This very-well may be the article or page that shows up first in the results of a search for your business. Since those other domains are usually high-traffic sites and host a lot of content, so they are a great way to boost your website and get more visitors organically.
You can find backlink opportunities with top referral sources and form quality partnerships with Digital Savvy’s top SEO package.
6. Rename existing images and add alt or img tags on the back-end of your website
If you have access to the back-end of your site and feel comfortable, this is a great way to boost engagement with photos and searches about your services. When you save a photo, rename that photo so that it’s not just IMG.jpg.
The more details you put into what content is existing on your website, the better your SEO will be. Once you rename the picture, add an alt tag to describe what is going on in the photo. You can also add keyword tags and make the photos a link to your services.
This creates an open communication from the images on your site to the image search in Google! I highly suggest adding photos and featured images break up content on your site. The more links to other pages on your site, the more time people will spend accessing your information and learning about your business.
I hope this helps give you SEO a boost and you can start seeing some organic results in traffic to your site! Seems like too much work? Contact Digital Savvy for more information and to see how she can help.