Search Engines are a way of life and your ability to be viewed will impact your business and sales. So how can you improve your ranking and better compete with the competition? Here are 10 easy ways to improve your site’s visibility and make an immediate impact:
Action 1: Search Engine Verification
First, you need to see if your site is properly interacting with Google, Yahoo and Bing by verifying your site and sitemaps and monitor statistics. Register with Google Webmaster Tools, create an account and upload code to your server for Google to spider. Then create a XML sitemap for all your pages and upload it to your Webmaster Tools account. Then you will be able to monitor pages indexed by Google, indexing errors, what keywords are being found, quantity of incoming links, broken links and much more.Contact me if you need help with this.
Action 2: Identify Your Primary Keywords
It’s good to analyze your keywords and what your customers are actually using to search you. Create a list of all imaginable keywords, ask for additional ones from colleagues, family and friends. You should have a list of at least 50 keywords / phrases. Then run them through a keyword research tool like WordTracker or Google Keyword Tool and select the ones that generate the most number of searches per day.
Action 3: Keyword Rich Content
Now integrate them into your page content. Do not repeat the keywords more than 3 or 4 times on a page. Next, rewrite your page titles, tags and headings with the new keywords. When you create new pages, seed the keywords into your file names.
Action 4: Unique Title and Meta Tags
Variety is good, so do not have the same Meta tags on each page. Vary them per page with new and unique Title and Meta descriptors that mirrors the actual page content. Again, seed them with your new and improved keywords.
Action 5: Install and Monitor Analytics
Statistics are the proof of any website’s ability to perform. Install Google Analytics immediately! It’s free and it will provide you with stats on web traffic and great marketing information. You will be able to monitor how visitors are interacting with your site, what pages they visit most, time spent on site, etc. You can then adjust your site to improve its performance.
Action 6: Be Fresh
That doesn’t mean to be rude. New content keeps the search engines returning to your site. By adding fresh content, you are telling the search engine spiders and your customers that you have lots to offer and it is an active and vibrant site worth visiting. And remember to seed the content with those new and improved keywords.
Action 7: Check Internal Links
Linking will significantly affect your search results. Make sure you check all you internal linking so there is nothing broken. Also check how you are linking between your own site pages affects page rank. Again, keywords in link structure are important. Change “click here” to “read more about xyz widget”. Google recognizes the relevance of a keyword-rich link to the content on the linking page.
Action 8: Utilize the Social Media
Social Media will help promote your site and bring in active links / visitors. Start utilizing the social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Whenever you make a blog post, a product announcement, special promotion or publish a newsletter, cross-post your social network. You’ll get more traffic and more incoming links, and more search engine juice.
Action 9: Get Connected
External links are extremely important and will affect your site’s ranking on search engines. The more incoming links to your site the more valued by search engines. They view you as an authority site if you have garnered a significant number of external links. Of course these external links must be quality as well and not spam from link farms.
Action 10: Site Speed
Another critical factor to improve search engine visibility is making sure your site loads quickly, thereby improving its performance. Google can has tools such as Page Speed that can help you diagnose and fix speed issues. A slow loading site will definitely affect Page Rank and number of page views.Test your Speed AND Mobile Friendliness here
Timeline for Results
Continue to be active because your site is a living, breathing entity at least as the search world views it. Continue to work and improve your site by adding new content, monitor your site’s performance, and be willing to put the time into changing or adding to it. Use your webmaster tools and analytics programs regularly.
By following these 10 Action Steps you should see results in 2 months. Why not start today!
If you do not have the patience or technical know-how please contact me and I can assist or advise.