Your business website can bring in a lot of business, help you build a good reputation, increase your brand awareness, and make your customers more loyal to your brand – but only if people find it and engage with it.
That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. SEO can make your website more visible to potential customers by helping it rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher your page ranks in the SERPs, the more traffic you’ll get, and the more people will be aware of your brand, your location, and your services. Here’s how to make it happen.
Choose Your Keywords
Keyword research is one of the most important parts of SEO. The right keywords will help people searching for your website to find it easily. Keywords reflect the queries that people make to search engines. You want to pepper your website content and metadata with the right keywords so that people searching for those terms can find you.
Start by thinking about what words and phrases your customers may be using to search for you online, and then brainstorm a list of words. You can use a keyword research tool to develop that list into a list of primary and secondary keywords for your site. You shouldn’t keyword stuff, but you can use different keywords on different pages to bring in as much search traffic as possible.
It’s important to rank at the top of SERPs, or failing that, on the first page. Few people are going to go to the second page of SERPs, much less the third or fourth.
However, it can be hard to rank on the first page of the SERPs for a high-volume keyword. It might be impossible to break into the top of the SERPs with a high-volume keyword, but you can improve the odds by using lower-volume keywords, especially ones that highlight some of the things that make your business unique. That can include your geographic location or other unique things that your business offers that competitors don’t.
Create Lots of Great Content
The quality of your content is what’s going to keep people coming back to your website again and again. It’s going to be what helps build confidence in your brand and loyalty to it. It can help you develop a strong reputation for thought leadership online.
And it’s crucial to rank high in SERPs because search engines favor sites that create value for users. Customers love strong, entertaining, informative, and useful content, and the way they interact with your site is going to tell search engines that your site is authoritative and useful, and that’s going to boost your SERP rankings. Just make sure your content is 100 percent original, and that you publish as much of it as you can. A blog is a good way to fill your website with a steady stream of fresh, keyword-rich content.
Build Backlinks
Backlinks are a crucial part of building authority online. When other sites link back to yours, that shows search engines that your site is considered a trusted authority in your industry. Build backlinks by guest posting thought leadership pieces on other websites and blogs, or by asking vendors, suppliers, and colleagues who aren’t your competitors to link back to your site from theirs. Build social media profiles and stay active on them – many people search for businesses on sites like Facebook the same way they would search for them on the wider internet. As with any aspect of SEO, if you’re struggling with building backlinks, you can work with an SEO agency in a major city like Phoenix to help you generate them.
Remember the User
A user-friendly website is one that’s responsive to mobile and easy to navigate. It’s also one that loads quickly. Remember the user and remember their experience when optimizing your website for search. If they have to wait longer than a couple of seconds for the page to load, or they can’t use the page on search, that will detract from the experience – and harm the website’s SEO.
Do you need more eyes on your website? You need to improve your SEO. Search engine optimization can gain you a lot more traffic from search – and the right keywords can even increase your conversions and sales. Don’t put off working on your website SEO any longer. Consider hiring an SEO agency if need be – it’s really that important.