How to Improve your Search Engine Optimization

Getting a new website is a great step toward online presence and brand awareness, but to get the best results you need potential customers to be able to find your website. Staying visible online, attracting visitors to your website, maintaining conversions, increasing sales, and keeping loyal customers can all be done through SEO and marketing campaigns.

Is SEO a Total Waste of Money?

SEO is an ongoing process—not a magic wand that will bring you clients overnight. However, armed with some knowledge, you will be able to improve your results!

What every business owner should know before launching an SEO campaign:

1. Know your audience and their intentions

 Before you begin a campaign, study who you are reaching! Gather information about your audience’s age group, socio-economic status, geographic location, behaviors, and education level. You can tailor your marketing strategy for your specific audience.

What are your visitors looking for?

People generally search for 3 different things: to gather information about a topic, to make a purchase, or to visit a specific company’s website.

Your services, keywords, and blog posts can all help with visibility for showing up in a search result and attracting visitors to your website. The visitors which are the most likely to land on your website are the ones looking for information about a certain topic, searching for solutions to an issue, or are aware of an existing issue, know the solution, and want a company to fix the issue. Read here for more information about user’s online behavior.

2. SEO vs. SEM

SEO, or “search engine optimization,” is the process of getting “free” traffic from organic search results through search engines. This traffic comes through the use of different keywords in meta tags and content throughout your web pages. It’s a great way to improve search engine visibility, attract your target audience, and improve sales.

A well-optimized website for a shoe company will rank for keywords like “formal shoes,” but not shoe shiner—unless that’s one of the services the company offers. If you take the time to optimize your website, it will increase your online visibility, help you rank for the right keywords, increase web authority, and reduce bounce rate (visitors leaving your website right after landing because they don’t see relevant information). Read more about SEO for small businesses here.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is basically the paid version of SEO. You can purchase an advertisement that increases your website visibility in search engine results pages. Traffic comes to your website through seeing your company at the top of the list.  It involves optimizing your website through PPC (pay per click) ads, social media ads, email marketing, and other types of advertisements. While this is more expensive than SEO, it provides results more quickly.

Design your landing page for an ad to optimize for conversion flow—you want it to be straight forward, answer any possible questions, and have a clear call to action.

3. Create engaging content

Once you have visitors coming to your website, keeping them there is determined by the quality of the content you provide. People are more likely to leave your website if they don’t see the information they are looking for.

4. Share! Share! Share!

What’s the point of creating great content if you’re the only one reading it? Social media works hand in hand with your web marketing strategies. Social platforms are great outlets for sharing new content, gaining brand visibility, and reaching out to clients, influencers, business partners, and the community in general. Here are some things to consider when choosing social media platforms for your business.

5. Backlinks: Quality vs. Quantity

Whether you call it link building or link earning, all you need to know is that you must do it! Think of backlinking as an online word of mouth: you need other websites to link to your website in order to get web authority. Having said that, to have other websites link to yours, you must be providing valuable content to their users. Start by focusing on what you do well in order to get backlinks: a writer can get backlinks from websites that need great content, a graphic designer can get linked from designing a great page, and a public speaker can schedule a speech and get backlinks from speech announcements. Search for your strength and be creative!

6. Have a secure website

You want your online customers to have the utmost confidence in you with their personal information, so take some extra steps to build this! Change your HTTP web address to HTTPS. And getting the highest security for an eCommerce website is very important!  Click here to learn more about HTTPS websites.

7. Is your website mobile friendly?

Most people search for information or places from their mobile device while they are on-the-go. It’s important to make sure that your website is readable from a small screen, that your menus are accessible, and that the site loads quickly. Find and fix these issues before clients do! Working with an experienced web developer can really help to make sure your website well on different devices.

8. Get reviews and testimonials

People would much rather work with someone they know or have been referred to—it’s our nature to listen to peer reviews before trying a certain product or working with someone blindly. Reviews play a major role in decision-making when it comes to conversion flow. Testimonials can show off your professionalism and what it’s like to work with you.

Isn’t SEO simple and easy? Yes, and no! Most of these strategies are can be time-consuming for busy people. Working with a marketing company that has experience and the tools to give you the results you need will leave you with more time for your business! Minuteman provides comprehensive marketing solutions at every level—both online and offline—so that you have time to expand your business and enjoy the results!

Businesses can gain online presence by ranking for the right keywords and providing relevant information to attract their audience. These simple tips will help you with your website’s SEO, but we are also here to help!