7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Company’s SEO
If you run your own small business, you have to wear a lot of hats. These include manager, accountant, administrator, and, all too frequently, SEO specialist. Search engine optimization requires special knowledge and skills, and if you don’t have the relevant training and experience, you may feel completely lost. However, if you follow these easy tips, you can significantly improve your business pages’ SEO, improve their ranking and visibility, and drive sales.
Create Content Around Keywords
Although keywords are not as important to search engine ranking as they used to be, they are still important. The first thing you need to do is write a list of 5 to 10 topics that you think are important to your business. Then, under each topic, make another list of important words and phrases that have to do with that topic. Try entering some of these words and phrases into the Google search engine. Scroll to the bottom of the search results page, where you’ll see some related search terms that Google suggests. Consider adding some of these to your lists. There are also a variety of online SEO tools that can help you come up with keyword ideas.
Keywords Used In Questions
You should have a good percentage of these keyword phrases written in the form of a question, such as “how do I find parts for a Dodge Charger” or how to statements like “how to find parts for a Dodge Charger.” These kinds of phrases are used in most Internet searches, so they stand a good chance of leading online searchers directly to your page.
Once you have a list of keywords sorted into different topics, you will have a good idea of dividing up the topics on your company’s website. Each topic should be its own page on the site, with content written around 3 to 4 of the best keyword phrases. (It can use more keywords if there is a lot of written content on the page.) The important thing is that the content has to flow naturally, with the keyword phrases naturally occurring. If the phrases are forced in or repeated too often, your site’s rank will suffer for it. Less is more here. Try to make the content as useful and helpful as possible, increasing search rank.
Optimize Your Images
Images are usually a good idea for any business site, but they could slow your pages’ loading, which can hurt your ranking if they are not properly optimized. Look at your pages’ HTML code, and see how much space is given to each image in pixels. Then open a copy of the image you used in that space in Photoshop or a similar image editor. Check that it has the same dimensions in pixels. You see, your image will be automatically resized to fit into the available space if it is too large, but doing that does nothing to improve image resolution. The extra data in large image files is completely wasted, as is the extra time it takes to download it. If your images are too large, resize them in the image editor to exactly fit the display size on the web page.
Each image should have alt text. This text should be a short description of the image and its relation to the content on the page. It should not repeat any content that is already on the page.
You can also choose images so that you can use keywords as image titles. This allows you to fit more keywords onto your page in a natural way.
Use Header Tags
It would be best if you always broke up any text on your web pages with header tags. They make it easier for readers to understand your content and find the information they are looking for. This will help improve your search rank.
Add Outbound Links
Most search engines determine rank in part on the value of your web page’s content. While every search engine company keeps its algorithms a secret, it is known that outbound links help when properly used. Use them whenever you cite any data or facts to back up your claim. This will make your website look more authoritative, which will improve its rank.
Make Contact Information Easy to Find
Many people who come to a website are looking for contact information for one reason or another. If this information is absent or difficult to find, your SEO could suffer. Put it, or a link to it, in a prominent location such as the home page.
Write a Good Meta Description
You need to write a good description of each page in the meta tag in the source code for that page. The description should include keywords relevant to the content of the page and describe the page’s contents well. Each one should be 160 characters or less. The meta description of each page should be unique.
Use Latent Semantic Indexing
Latent semantic indexing, or LSI, is a part of how search engines determine the quality of information on a page. You see, they do not just search for the words typed into the search engine. They search for synonyms for those words as well. After all, in natural writing, people tend to use different synonyms instead of the same term repeated repeatedly. So when you write your content, sometimes use synonyms for your keywords–for example, “budget phone” in addition to “affordable phone.”
The Takeaway
You don’t have to be an SEO expert to improve your company’s SEO. Just follow these simple steps, and you should see your business pages rise in the search engine rankings.
