Ways to Improve Your Business’s SEO

While it’s common knowledge that a website is the foundation of a solid marketing strategy, many businesses forget that digital strategy goes beyond simply having a website. You can’t generate business leads if no one can find you online, but by optimizing your website’s SEO,  you can make sure you rank higher in search results so that more people can find you. Here’s our guide to SEO and 5 easy ways you can integrate it into your website today!

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process of getting online traffic to your website through organic, free results on search engines. Major search engines, such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo have primary search results where content is ranked based on what the search engine algorithm considers to be most relevant to users.

The Importance of Keywords

Adding keywords to your website supercharges it to be ranked higher on search engines and help your customers find you. Keywords are the terms and phrases that your customers enter into search engines when researching your business, services, or industry.

You need to find out which keywords are best for your business in order to leverage their ability to drive traffic to your website. You can begin your keyword research by evaluating your competitor’s websites and see what keywords they’ve included and are ranking for. A few changes to your page may be all you need to stand out!

Keyword research will show you which topics people are interested in and how popular those subjects are with your customers. By doing research on popular keywords for your business or industry, you can choose how to create and sort your own content. This will essentially help you answer the questions that your customers are asking.

Another method to add keywords to your website is to go through your website page by page and identify a different keyword phrase for each, thinking about how your customer might search for the content on that page. Once you’ve decided on the keywords to include on your website, you just need to find a place for them.

Keywords can be used in a website’s URL, page title, headings or subheadings, and website copy. Just remember to be natural and use your keywords in a way that will still enhance the readability and user-friendliness of your site.

Update Your Website Content

Regularly updating the content on your website will improve your search engine rankings and show your customers that your webpage is the place to be. Even if your product offering hasn’t changed, don’t be afraid to find a creative way to add new content and messaging to your website to share with the world.

Stay updated with industry trends, as they can be a helpful source of inspiration for creating content. Keeping your content fresh is seen as one of the best measures of a website’s relevancy, so set a reminder at least 2-4 times a year to audit your content and update as necessary!

When you have high-quality content that has been created specifically for your customer, they’ll want to stay longer, a digital marketing concept called dwell time. The longer your dwell time, the higher your SEO, which will increase traffic to your website as well as improve your website’s influence.

Customers bookmarking your website also increases SEO. By frequently publishing engaging content, you’ll create a website people want to come back to again and again, increasing your chances of being bookmarked.

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

Many people don’t realize it, but the photos on your website can have a large amount of metadata that will affect your SEO. Metadata refers to the data on your website that describes and provides information about your website. You can optimize your photos by renaming the files with keywords that describe the photo, your business, or your industry.

Don’t go overboard and overload each photo with dozens of keywords because search engines could perceive this as spam and it could actually hurt your SEO. You can also add a caption to your photo if that would be beneficial to provide your audience with a better understanding of the visual.

Get Faster Load Times

Having the best content on the Internet doesn’t help if your webpages are agonizingly slow to load. If your website doesn’t load within 4-6 seconds, it’s too slow.

A slow website drives away users, negatively affects how customers perceive your brand, and ranks you lower on search engine results. One of the potential causes of a slower website could actually be the content that’s on it.

For example, large image files and external links can cause your website to lag as it’s loading. You can reduce this time by compressing image files or limiting your use of external redirects. When optimizing your website’s load time, it’s important to enhance both your page speed and server response time.

It’s All About the Links

Adding links to your website creates an interconnected experience that’s attractive to both search engines and customers. You should add a link to your website when:

• • Writing a blog and connecting it to another page on your site that’s relevant to the topic
  • Talking on social media about the products or services your offer
  • Creating a call-to-action so your customers can reach out to you

As a rule of thumb, never link something on your website by saying, “Click Here,” because this provides no value to search engines. Descriptive links or keywords are rich in information for both your reader and search engines to help improve your SEO.

Incorrect: “Click Here” for our full offering of digital marketing solutions.

Correct: Pulse ISM’s Digital Marketing Solutions are perfect for your business!

Improving the SEO of your website can seem like an overwhelming task with ever-evolving best practices, but at Pulse ISM, we’re here to keep your website best optimized for SEO so you can focus on running your business. Give our team of digital marketing masters a call at (913) 662-1405 or contact us for more information or to set up a consultation.