Last week we touched on 10 search engine optimization tips for small businesses. This week, we have 10 more tips on how to improve your SEO on your website.
- You don’t need to submit your website to the search engines. They have evolved beyond that now but you can request a forced crawl to update faster when an important page on a website, is created. Google’s direct advice on this topic is:
“If you’ve recently made changes to a URL on your site, you can update your web page in Google Search with the Submit to Index function of the Fetch as Google tool. This function allows you to ask Google to crawl and index your URL.”
Bing offers this url submission link. - Get advice directly from Google and Bing. Google offers information via their Webmaster Guidelines and Webmaster Help Videos. Bing also has a Webmaster Help Page.
- Don’t risk Black Hat penalties. A penalty from trying to cheat the system results in a significant, and often long-term, loss of visitors to your site. Never use manipulative methods or try to cheat the system. Coming back from black listing and delisting is time intensive and very expensive to repair.
- You are responsible for all of SEO on your website. Search engines won’t remove a penalty on the basis that you didn’t do, or didn’t know the implications of, the SEO work being done on your site. Many SEO companies can offer to sell you page likes, clicks and traffic but if it isn’t genuine engagement by real people it will actually hurt you in the long run.
- Set-up and use Google and Bing Search Console. These consoles are a treasure trove of information about keywords, your site is ranking, and which sites are linking to your site.
- Set-up and use Google and Bing Analytics products. Track how many visitors your site gets, the keywords they use to find it, and what pages they visit on your site.
- Set-up a Google+ page for your business. The majority of internet searches come from google so having your google plus page filled out and avaialble for clients to find is just good and courteous business practice. Having a google+ page also builds trust with Google and may improve rankings for localized keywords.
- Diversify your targeted traffic sourcing. Google is a great source of traffic but don’t forget Bing and Facebook. Being 100% reliant on any one source for visitors puts you in a vulnerable position. Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. Branch out and you will see a big difference.
- You may want to use Pay Per Click in addition to SEO. If you can afford to do both, then do both but keep an eye on your ROI or return on investment. Not all keywords or ad campaigns will give you a return as high as your investment. Some keywords are highly valued due to demand and not actual customer traffic value. PPC can be costly, you can get visitors to your site straight away for any keywords that you want but you want to be sure that you are not spending more than you are making.
- Low quality equals high risk. Never pay for or endorse low quality backlinks and/or low quality on-site content. Never copy and paste content. It will just result in your site being penalized by search engines.
Each week, we will have another set of SEO tips to help your small business. Check out Design Web’s Facebook page here to stay up-to-date on the latest news and information.
