If you’re a small business owner and have a website, it's time you familiarize yourself with search engine optimization. As daunting as search engine optimization may seem, it’s a pretty tame beast to wrangle.
In this article, we’ll be going over 5 easy, DIY steps you can take to improve your website’s SEO performance and get your business ranking higher in the search engines.
Hiring an SEO expert can be expensive, before you go out and spend money on SEO services, here are cost-free ways to boost your website’s performance and get your business seen online.
Optimize Website Imagery
Customers need to be able to easily access your website. If the images take too long to load or the buttons don’t work, customers aren’t going to stick around. Improving the site’s performance begins with optimizing your image for the web.
When images are optimized for the web there is faster load time, the website ranks higher in search engines, and it enhances the user experience.
A few ways you can make sure your images are web-friendly:
Compress images to a file size of 70kg or smaller
Use progressive PNGs to ensure images load faster
Use alt-tags for images, this helps with SEO and user accessibility
Don't Optimize Every Page For the Same Keywords
Avoid keyword stuffing. Search engines catch on to that, and in the end, it hurts the website's rankability. This is when performing keyword research is important. Ask yourself, “what’s the subject of this webpage?”, then take that subject (or keyword) to an online SEO tool, and see how well it ranks in the SERPs, you’ll be able to uncover what customers are searching for online and discover new keywords that relate to the pages overall subject.
Create Click-Inspiring Title Tags
Title tags, also known as page titles and HTML titles, tell search engines the subject of the webpage, they also tell the search engine how relevant a webpage is to the searcher's quarry. For this reason, it’s important that title tags are accurate and optimized with relevant keywords.
Get creative when writing title tags, avoid only using the company name and product, and think about incorporating words that inspire clicks. Title tags have an impact on your website’s CTR (click-through rate) in the SEPRs. Be aware that title tags show up in three places online: the browser tab, SEPR, and external websites.
Optimize Meta Descriptions
The meta description lives below the title tag, its role is to briefly describe what the webpage is about. Think of it as your elevator pitch for search engine traffic. You’ve got 300 characters to work with, it should be punchy, keyword centric, and include a call to action. Avoid using the same keyword in both the title tag and meta description.
Use HTML Tags
Employ the use of H tags, aka, header tags are HTML tags that tell a browser how to structure a page’s content.
HTML tags look like this:
<h2> engaging content is crucial <h2>
H tags also aid in making the page easy to follow and increase the user experience.
H tags follow a hierarchical structure. H1 to H6. H1 tags mark the most important text such theme/subject of the page. H2 and H3 tags are generally used as subheadings. H4, H5, and H6 tags provide further structure to the page. H1 and H2 tags are used once, their use should not be repeated. Don’t use the H tags out of order.
Engaging Content is Crucial
Website content should be short and sweet, you want to hook the reader's attention and get them to move through your website. If your content is muddled with flowery words and hard-to-understand jargon, the reader won't stick around.
Engaging content should lead the reader to act. When writing, ask yourself, “what do I want the customer to do next?", that should help guide your writing.
If your business is looking for further SEO guidance, GROW Marketing Agency offers exceptional SEO services. Our SEO and content specialists will run an SEO analysis of your website, help you uncover sore spots on your website, and look for opportunities to further your brand’s reach. We’ll get your ranking on the search engines.
Rebecca Fields is a creative digital marketing ringleader who spends her days helping small and medium-size businesses understand and harness the art and the science of digital marketing. Her passion lies in finding what creates the “I gotta have that!” moment in a buyer’s mind, and developing spellbinding lead magnets to spark the magic.
GROW Marketing Agency is a St. Louis-based Sales and Marketing Agency specializing in Website, Digital Marketing, & Business growth solutions. We help companies increase their revenue by creating the pathways that lead customers to the heart of their business. Individually tailored and guaranteed to deliver results, our growth strategies save clients time and money while increasing their market share.
