Business owners are always looking to improve their rankings on search engine results pages. After all, most people don’t click past the first page of results. You want your business to be in that top 10. Getting there takes patience and time, along with some careful work.
Search Engine Optimization has become so particular that it’s best to hire someone who focuses on your website for you. However, if you’re just not there yet and want to make some changes on your own, here are some things you can do:
- Get a physical address. Google Maps lean toward those with a brick-and-mortar building. Many service-based B2Bs work from their home or a coffee shop, and of course you don’t want to list your home address. However, you can rent a post office box with a real address now, so consider that if you don’t want to rent separate office space.
- Make sure your website is responsive. If your site is several years old, you will rank lower in the search results because it’s probably not built for mobile devices. More than half of internet browsers are surfing with phones and tablets, which means Google puts weight on sites that look good. If you have a separate mobile version of your website, that’s going to hurt, not help.
- Fill out the metadata on your website. The words you type in on the back end to describe pages and your website don’t carry as much weight as they used to, but it’s still necessary to fill out these sections. If you’re not sure how to do this on your Wordpress or Joomla! site, contact us for help.
- Create a sitemap. A sitemap is one more way of telling the search engine spiders what your site is and what it contains. It’s just what it sounds like: a map of your website’s pages and content. You can check out these tools to create one or call us for help.
- Fix broken links. Broken links will lower your ranking. Make sure you don’t have any links on your site that send people to closed websites. You can install broken link checker tools on both Wordpress and Joomla! websites.
- Create content. Update your website’s content at least once a month. A blog or news section is the easiest approach, but if you cannot publish regularly, you can make changes to pages instead. Google puts weight on sites that are consistently offering fresh information.
Managing SEO is a mixture of art and science. Find out how we can help improve your rankings.