As a business owner, part of your marketing strategy likely involves getting found in one (or all) of the search engines. It takes some work as you first start out but as time passes, it becomes an easy, every day or weekly habit that gets results.
6 Steps to Awesome SEO
Write each page for your customer, not for search engines – Long gone are the days of keyword stuffing. It was a practice of putting a desired keyword onto each page as often as possible. Today it is highly frowned upon. Customers hate reading these pages and search engines hate them even more. Creatively write each page for your customer. Write in detail about your services, products, company, and what makes you amazing! Don’t try and cheat. The more naturally you write, the better you will do in the rankings. If you must know, Google likes a keyword density of 3-5% for a given keyword or phrase on each page. The right keyword density should work if you write naturally.
Create an easy to remember domain – For the most part, your business name will do just fine because it likely contains a ‘keyword’ in it. Perfect examples are ‘Andy’s Construction Services’ for www.andysconstructionservices.com or ‘Nancy’s Flower Shop’ for www.nancysflowershop.com. If you have an obscure company name you may want to consider buying a new domain, just be careful. Google is starting to crack down on URL’s that look like you are trying to cheat. One simple keyword with your company name in the domain will do.
Create unique and descriptive page titles – This is a basic but important step to take for SEO. A proper page title tells the search engines and users exactly what the page is about. Be creative, insert a keyword and briefly describe the page. It should be between 60 and 70 characters with spaces.
Create an awesome ‘meta description’ for each page – A ‘meta description’ is one or two sentences that are used to describe what each page is about. The main purpose isn’t for search engines. It is used to entice a potential customer into clicking on your page rather than the competitions website. It is recommended that it is 130 – 155 characters (including spaces).
Make your site easy to use and mobile friendly – The easier your site is for your customers to use, especially on mobile, the better. Google and the other search engines take this into consideration when deciding how well a website ranks. Think of it this way: if someone visits your site and leaves (or bounces) immediately, the search engines take this into consideration and think your site isn’t related to the keyword they used. If the potential customer visits your site and goes to several other pages, then fills out a form or calls, Google will think they found exactly what they are looking for. The longer someone stays and the more pages a user visits, the higher you will likely rank. That is also why it’s important to have a site that looks and works great on mobile. More than 50% of all people use their phone or tablet when searching online.
Submit your website to Google – If you haven’t already done so, you need to submit your website to Google and the other search engines. This step is often overlooked but it is crucial. How is anyone going to know your website exists if you don’t take this step?
Many business owners that I talk with simply can’t find the time to do proper SEO for their website. This holds especially true if you have a huge website. The task can seem overwhelming but is absolutely necessary. Regular SEO Maintenance is a necessity. Simply having a website is only half the battle.