Let’s be honest, search engine optimization (SEO) is not an exact science. There is no formula that says if you do ‘x’ you’ll get ‘y’ in return, but there are things that you can do that will have a positive impact on the traffic on your website with the hopes of increasing sales.
The goal of any SEO program is to offer an exceptional user experience, and to ensure that your site can communicate its intentions to to all search engines so they can recommend your website in relevant searches.
Before creating an SEO program independently, or with the help of a vendor, you’ll want to keep these three things in mind:
- Be true to your goals – Keep your business goals in mind. What do you want to accomplish? How does SEO align with those goals? Depending on how you answer that question, your SEO program will have to be tailored to meet those specific goals.
- How you are doing now – You should know how your site is performing now and how it performed in previous years. Having that data will show your site’s shortcomings and what needs to be done to fix them.
- Know what you can commit to – An SEO program can be as big as you want to make it, if you have a budget and time. The most targeted SEO program can have positive results, so there is no reason to overextend your bank account or your staff.
No matter how big or small your SEO strategy is, you must include how Google will react to your changes. This litmus test of all things SEO can be boiled down to two thoughts: make a site you want to visit, and make sure it’s written the way people would want to read it.
The following tips should help your business climb the ranks of Google search:
- Name your pages — Pages with a descriptive name and a title attribute can help with rankings because Google may use the webpage’s title as the link in the search. If there is no name, the link may come across as “untitled” which most consumers won’t click on, adversely affecting your rankings.
- Know your links — Surprisingly, one of the biggest things Google reviews is the hyperlinks you use and, in turn, what other companies link to your site. See how the structure of the link is also important.
- Design matters — Google tends to rank organized pages higher. As the rank goes up, so does the popularity driving the ranking even higher — so pay attention to design as much as you do to SEO.
See more Google best practices to increase your rankings now.
