Figuring out how to improve SEO for your business is not always straightforward. Search engine optimization requires looking at the big picture as well as small details. If you are a small business owner, you may not have a dedicated SEO team, either, which can make things trickier. Fortunately, these 10 guidelines can work for any business, whatever your industry.
Tips on How To Improve SEO
Regardless of the steps you take to improve SEO, you must know who you are targeting and what problem(s) you solve for those clients. Understanding these variables lets you take the most effective SEO approaches.
1. Assess (Or Reassess) Who Your Clients Are and Why They Would Search for Your Business
Ask questions such as the following to shine light on the language you use in content and the keywords you select:
- Do clients find you on their phone, tablet, or computer?
- Are they at home, work, or somewhere else when they search?
- Does a personal issue or disruption (such as marriage troubles, pet emergency, bankruptcy, or being locked out of their car) cause them to search for businesses like yours?
- Does a desire (being hungry, wanting tickets to a game, or needing a new computer) lead to the search?
2. Work With an Agency
If you’ve been doing SEO yourself or have tasked someone in-house to handle it along with other duties, think about working with a marketing agency. Unless you or your assigned employee happens to possess professional SEO credentials, working with a marketing agency likely is a better use of your time and resources.
There’s no denying that SEO takes a ton of time, whether it’s researching the right keywords to use or producing optimized content to accommodate them. You must do this over and over again. Regularly adding great content to your website is an absolute must if you’re trying to start ranking on Google. Additionally, poorly executed content can actually have a counteractive effect and ruin your chances of appearing in SERPs. When you work with an agency that specializes in SEO you can rest easy knowing that mistakes that might penalize your potential rankings are being avoided and free up hours of time for yourself and your employees to focus on other aspects of your business.
How can we help?
At Rogue Wave Marketing, we reveal the uniqueness of every brand through inspirational and impactful messaging and content catered for your audience.
3. Optimize for Local SEO
If you have not yet optimized for local SEO, now is the time to do it. This step is less important if your business lacks a local focus and physical storefront. However, carving out a local niche if you have been targeting clients all over the world is an important aspect of how to improve SEO and add more clients and revenues.
These steps help you with local SEO:
- Personalize or expand your free Business Profile on Google. Add your phone number, address, and hours, then share your logo and pictures and mention attributes such as your business being woman- or veteran-owned. As time passes, your business should get client reviews and star ratings to boost its profile.
- Get busy on social media. Conduct research to determine which platform(s) fit your business and clients best, and create accounts there. Stay on top of social media, and share blog posts and other types of website content.
- Create location pages for your website. These are also called city landing pages, geo pages, and service area pages. They deploy location-specific keywords and location-specific images, and include all of your relevant business information (hours, address, contact, etc.). End your content with a call to action (CTA) that is relevant. For instance, if your business is computer repair, your CTA could suggest that clients stop by your shop to drop off their computer, schedule service online, or call to chat with a technician. Have multiple localized landing pages with different CTAs.
- Add your business to local directory listings and publications.
- Get links to your website from local businesses for link building. For example, local event pages, area bloggers, the chamber of commerce, the newspaper, potential business partners in the area, charities, and even tourism websites could link to your business.
4. Build Out Your Website
Expand your website to include pages along the lines of “About Us” and “Giving Back to the Community.” Add pages for specific products or services, and add internal links to them.
5. Get Reviews
Clients who read good, useful reviews are more likely to give your business a try. Reviews are a form of social proof, so encourage your clients to leave a few positive words. For example, on your receipts, you can have a note asking clients to leave reviews on Google. Your store could feature placards asking for reviews so you can continue to provide excellent service.
6. Perform On-Page Optimization
Using your targeted keywords in multiple places is an excellent way to improve SEO. Optimize title tags, subheadings, images, videos, body content, internal links, and meta descriptions, among other things.
7. Check Your Page Load Speed
Your website loading speed affects how well your website ranks in Google. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your web pages on all types of devices.
8. Research Your Competitors’ Moves
Who shows up when you search for your targeted keywords? Remember to include location-based keywords if applicable. The businesses claiming the top five to 10 slots are the competitors you want to study as you examine how to improve SEO.
Perform a competitive analysis to assess their long-tail keywords, website structure, indexed pages, and quality backlinks, among other things. See if there are any keywords they have overlooked that you could use to reach more of an audience. Going forward, you can apply what you learned to your own page’s SEO.
9. Look at Your Competitors’ Presence in the Community
What events and promotions do your competitors host? Are they more involved in community events than your company? Giving back to the community serves multiple purposes, including improving your business SEO.
Wondering How To Improve SEO?
If you are wondering how to improve SEO for your business, get in touch with Rogue Wave Marketing today. We offer blogging and SEO services, web design and development, and marketing coaching.
