Hello! Nick Ponte coming to you from Maui, Hawaii. For years, I’ve helped small business owners make progress in their digital marketing plans and, as a result, expand their business’s reach and revenue.
Lately, I’ve written about ideas to optimize websites based on specific goals and circumstances, but what if you’re just getting started with some of these concepts about SEO? Where do you begin?
Plus, once you’ve worked to build a website for your business, how do you make sure it doesn’t float around somewhere on the internet, hidden under a bunch of other search results? How do you get visibility from your ideal customer?
Let me share a few changes you can make in a small amount of time to make a big impact on your website’s optimization.
Also Read: How Hawaii Businesses Can Use Content Optimization to Improve Search Engine Results
Make the Most of Your Website
I talk to many new business owners who get overwhelmed with the idea of optimizing their website. They suddenly find they have to jump into an unfamiliar world of digital marketing, with new terms and methods they’ve never considered.
Even business owners who’ve had an established website for years can grow frustrated with their digital marketing efforts. They find long-standing methods aren’t as effective, or they never really figure out how to turn their website into an effective, business-growing tool.
One individual I know struggled to get new clients for his consulting startup. He spent hours working on a website and trying to build a brand. Unfortunately, the only people regularly viewing his online content had a direct link from his business card or email signature.
I have a different philosophy: Every second you spend working on your website should produce a direct return for your business. It takes working smarter, not harder.
When you start working on website optimization, you want to strategically implement concepts so that customers (and revenue) roll in. Luckily, you can take some quick steps that pack a punch for your marketing strategy without spending hours and hours of effort on the back-end.
Also Read: Guide to SEO Link Building
3 Ways to Increase Your Website’s Organic Reach
I’ve figured out several quick wins to increase a website’s traction and make it skyrocket up the ranks of search results.
- Use the Resources in Google Business Suite
First things first: I always recommend businesses take advantage of Google’s extensive range of free tools for business owners. They are easy to implement, and Google provides plenty of instructions and support. As resources put together by the world’s top search engine company, Google’s tools put you in an excellent position to get the best results out of your digital marketing strategy.
One of the most important of these include Google Analytics. To get a feel for where your website stands in terms of traffic and conversions, you can view your analytics. You can observe changes and see the features of your website that need work to improve their performance. You can also get a better angle on how search engines use the information on your website and present it to users.
In addition, you should use Google Search Console. It gives data about keyword performance, so you can look at how your website’s SEO works in your business’s favor… or where you need to improve it.
With the information these (free!) tools offer, you can determine what amount of attention and resources need to go toward your online strategy.
- Establish Link-Building Opportunities through Relationships
Just as customer reviews provide social proof for your business, recommendations from other businesses help, too! Establish as many relationships you can with credible businesses around you. Develop strategic partnerships. Then, link to each other on your websites. This way, some of your traffic goes to them, and vice versa. Plus, getting linked to on other websites will boost your SEO ranking.
Any business relationships you establish create the potential for a link-building opportunity. Think about places your business already interacts with. How might your website interactions reflect the real-life relationship you share? Contact those businesses and see what kind of reciprocal approach you can work out together for the benefit of your digital marketing strategies.
- Website Organization
Do you ever go to a website and find yourself unable to locate basic information about the business? Or have you gotten frustrated because you can’t find a way to contact a customer service representative?
These problems often stem from a lack of awareness about website organization and how the customer navigates it.
To make sure this frustration doesn’t happen for your customers, make sure the flow of your website makes sense to its visitors. Keep your navigation bar simple and to-the-point. Include links to the top categories of information your customers need.
Think about the questions your customers ask, and preemptively offer the answers through the structure of your site. To get some insight on this, ask another employee or someone not involved with website creation to click through your webpages and give feedback.
Your website organization will not only help your customers navigate your content, it will also help search engines more effectively read your website. This will help to improve your ranking in search results.
These three tips will quickly get you moving in a good direction to improve your reach on the web. However, these steps are just part of a larger strategy you need to implement to improve your overall abilities to expand your business. Through our all-encompassing strategy, we can help your business reach the top of Google’s search results.
If you want to learn more or want help, reach out to us today!
Further Reading: 3 Ways to Optimize Your Website and Google My Business to Drive Leads
Photos Courtesy of Look Down Photography, Sebastian Herrmann, Antonio Janeski