Before you spend a dollar on a paid campaign we will frequently ask a client: “what are you doing with SEO already?” Making a few small changes to your routine website maintenance with SEO can help you rank higher in search engines. Beyond the money-saving efforts, ranking highly in search engines is paramount because 70% and 80% of users completely ignore paid advertisements anyways.
1. Improve Page Load Time
When your page load time is slow, Google is among the first to take note. Ultimately, this results in worse placement in search engines. Not only is your placement hurt, but also your user experience. If a user feels like a page is loading too slowly, they are more inclined to bounce from your site and look elsewhere, continuing to hurt your placement by increasing bounce rate. One way to see how your site is doing with load time is to head over to Google’s free service PageSpeed Insights.
2. Link Building
Link building is another important piece to an effective growth plan for your business.
Backlinks are another name for links that drive referral traffic to your site from another reputable site. Backlinks take time to achieve and thus the difficulty curve is higher. The important thing to remember is to create content people want to refer back to.
In addition to building backlinks, work on building internal links as well. Internal links are links that connect other pages on the same website via hyperlink. Strategic use of internal links can help your page rank better and increase site authority overall. Internal links also help to improve user experience by simplifying navigation.
Lastly, links tell search engines what your site is about. It’s important to have links to quality outside sources about your products and services.
3. Optimizing Alt Tags
Having photos and videos on your website are a great way to improve user experience and also creates new opportunity to continue optimizing for growth as well as improving ADA compliance. Alt tags are used for creating a text-based alternative to photos or videos on a page. These text alternatives help search engine crawlers to find your website when someone is searching for related content.
4. Content is KEY
Creating high-quality content is one of the most important rank factors. It is important to remember to not “create just to create” but to make it valuable for your reader. Think about who your audience is and write for them. Creating high-quality content also helps drive the probability of backlinks. We talk constantly about the need for video in your marketing efforts, especially in 2022, but also creating content such as product pages, blogs, articles, lists, guides, infographics, photos, and much much more.
5. Utilize Social Media
Social media is an essential business practice for growth. While social media does not directly improve your organic ranking in search engines, it does create social signals that are influential. The use of social media creates increased opportunities for sharing and visibility with your business presence online and likes and shares on the platform improve that and push content further. Social media helps to drive brand awareness and reputation while also increasing organic traffic. Use social media to keep blogs up to date and use sharing buttons in your blogs to make it easier for a user to spread your content. Do not be afraid to ask people to share your content and engage with your audience on your social channels.
