Hello, Nick Ponte here.
Being a small business owner in Hawaii myself, I thrive when I am helping businesses around me survive and succeed in the digital marketplace. I love to keep track of all the business trends for our islands and share what I can. I also like to give away knowledge, insights, and tools to help you.
Lately, we’ve been talking about the ways businesses can excel in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We’ve also discussed how Hawaii businesses can stay on top of the trends here, especially as the islands open back up and make a comeback from the pandemic.
I thought it’d be helpful to talk about an amazing trend happening right now in Hawaii and how businesses can respond to it. Though I’ve shared my beginning and intermediate strategies for SEO, I haven’t shared all the tools I use regularly. I want to put these tools in your hands so you can stay ahead of the curve on SEO, especially in light of recent events.
Also Read: The No-Fear Guide to Basic SEO For Your Website
Hawaii’s Comeback
Like we talked about a couple of months back, Hawaii has started to come back from the pandemic. This week, I learned more good news: most Hawaii restaurants are seeing the same or better foot traffic than they saw before the pandemic. April was a fantastic month, and May continued the trend.
This news is equally as great for every business in Hawaii. As more people start to get out for food, they’ll get out for other businesses, too.
This is coupled with another important trend: people are using Google more and more frequently to find restaurants and even order from them. Google is currently working on a program that allows people to order food directly from their search results page. It’s hard to find the words to describe how monumental this could be for restaurants and businesses in general.
This transformation means that it will soon become impossible for a business to thrive unless it knows how to navigate the digital marketplace; and the ones who adapt early will see dividends unlike ever before.
So much of this change is powered by search engines. If you operate a business in Hawaii, you want people to find you easily. You want to rank high on Google’s searches. And I want to give you the tools to accomplish these instrumental tasks.
Also Read: How Hawaii Businesses Boost Revenue Through Content Marketing
Tools of The Trade
Here are some of the tools I use regularly, categorized by their main function. Feel free to bookmark the list to come back to the next time you’re working on your website.
Keyword Research
As you work on your website’s SEO, Ubersuggest should be your first stop. This tool from online marketing legend Neil Patel allows you to search for terms related to your business, find how different keywords perform, get new keyword ideas, and even new content suggestions.
If you want to start a blog for your business (which you should, since it will boost your web traffic), you can simply type what you do into the search and find all the top-performing posts on the topic. This also includes some of their analytics, so you know how each post succeeded.
Content
Half of SEO is getting your website’s landing pages to rank high and attract new visitors. The other half is using content marketing to increase traffic and improve your brand’s credibility. Frase helps you formulate and edit your blogs to compete with the best content on the web.
It will show you which keywords to use and when, as well as the strength of both your headings and your body text. Perhaps best of all, it lets you know when you’re overusing certain keywords, which Google will detect and penalize you for.
User Experience
The speed at which your pages load is important for Google’s algorithm and also for your real users. Generally speaking, you want your pages to load as fast as possible. This tool enables you to see how long your pages take to load and why, so you can cut the time down.
One of the most common ways a customer will find your business in 2021 is by searching for one like yours on their smartphone. Make sure your website is optimized for both mobile and desktop experiences.
Though web.dev has multiple functions, I really like its accessibility and best practices features. This tool, straight from Google, will have a simulated device visit your site and provide quite a few measures for its performance and user experience. As you take its suggestions, you can keep track of your progress to determine what changes provided the best results.
Crawling/Technical SEO
To assign your rank in various searches, Google uses bots to “crawl” your website. The bots don’t look at your surface content, but rather the code behind everything. A tool like Deepcrawl helps you make sure your code has no errors and is optimized for Google’s crawling.
Miscellaneous
When a person searches Google, they can see more than just base results. They can also search videos, images, shopping, maps, news, and more. One increasingly popular SEO tactic is to publish stories that rank highly in the news tab. News Flashboard helps you determine how visible your stories are in Google, and how to make them even better.
If you want help with your SEO, reach out to us today!
Further Reading: Local SEO: Making Your Brand Famous In Your Location
Photos Courtesy of Joseph Frank and Jennifer Pallian