So, you’ve got a site up and running. The design is perfectly on brand for your small business, the copy describes so completely what you do for your customers. The only problem? You have no visitors!
It’s tough gaining traction on a new website, especially if you’re not an expert in search engine optimization (SEO). Don’t worry though! Even as an SEO beginner, there are (relatively easy!) things you can do for your website to help improve your rankings. I’ll share a few of my favorite tips with you today.
Optimize your content for people, not for search engines
Gone are the days of getting away with any type of keyword stuffing. It just doesn’t work anymore. Instead, truly the best thing you can do is to write your content for your customers—not for the search engines. When you’re creating quality, share-worthy content that is valuable to your prospects or your existing customers, you’re automatically giving your SEO a boost.
ACTION >> Comb through your website’s content. Ask yourself if it’s valuable for your users, or if certain paragraphs or even pages have just been created in the hopes of giving your SEO a boost. Turn your attention to these and edit as necessary.
Work on your meta information
Title tags and URLs are a factor in your overall SEO ranking, so it’s definitely worth giving them a second look over to ensure they are as descriptive as possible and include your keywords as it makes sense to do so. Meta descriptions, on the other hand, no longer have an impact on your SEO, but they’re still a good chance to use compelling copy that engages users and entices them to click in to view your site.
ACTION >> If you’re using WordPress, I highly recommend installing the Yoast SEO plugin to test your titles, URLs, and meta descriptions. This is also a great plugin to test other SEO-related things on your site, like keyword density and readability.
Embrace your blog
One of THE best ways to boost your organic SEO is through your blog! The key here is to write helpful, relevant content geared toward your target market, as ever-changing content gives the search engines a reason to continue coming back to re-crawl your site.
ACTION >> Think about how many posts you (and your team) could afford to write each month. This doesn’t have to be something that takes up a ton of your time: I like to do a couple of posts a month, but if you can only swing one, that’s certainly better than none. Aim to, over time, curate a catalog of helpful articles geared toward your target audience.
Work on your links
Both internal links and quality external links are a factor in your site’s SEO. Internal links are vital in connecting your site’s content together in a meaningful way, helpful for both users to your site and for the search engines to be able to properly index your site. External links fall into a few different groups: natural editorial links, manual outreach building links, and self-created non-editorial links.
ACTION >> If you want to expand your external link reach, and don’t know where to start, I recommend diving into this Moz article for a great deep dive into links and their impact on SEO.
Hopefully this helps you get started and moving in the right direction! If you’re interested in a deeper dive into all things SEO, I HIGHLY recommend Moz’s Beginners Guide to SEO. It’s super comprehensive and easy to follow. Truly, a great resource for anyone eager to learn more!