If you have a business, your number one priority beyond monetary gain is probably going to be growth. There are so many practices that can help you gain recognition in your community, and the rise of the internet has created a whole other realm to conquer when it comes to business strategy. While there was a time that having a great service or product was all you needed to be successful, now a days you have to be intentional with your online presence. One of the most crucial ways you can keep your business at the top of the competitive food chain is by constantly fine tuning your SEO (search engine optimization). If you have a business but are not familiar with optimizing google friendly content for your website, we would love to help get you started with this abridged guide to your SEO.
What is SEO?
When you type something into the search bar of any search engine like google, in a matter of seconds there are pages and pages of resources for you to click through. The order in which that content is displayed has to do with the relevance and how the content for each of those websites or links is rated. This is SEO. Your goal, as a business, is to be sure that your page pops up on the first search results page and as close to the top as possible. The statistics for where your weblink falls on the google search page and how many clicks it will get are staggering! According to DataBox, there are well over 6 billion daily google searches, and 67% of all clicks following that google search goes to the top 5 search results. Meaning, mastering SEO will mean more traffic for your website as people search for content related to your goods or services, and more online traffic means more business for you!
High Quality Content
When it comes to the content that is shared on your website, it should meet a couple of parameters in order to boost your SEO. Whether this is in the form of regular blog posts, web page content, social media posts, or any other form of writing done for your business site, the information needs to be engaging and relevant. “High quality” does not just apply to writing error free content (which should go without stating), but your posts should be both useful and entertaining and the type of content that others want to read and hopefully share!
Choosing Keywords
When you are writing content for your website, one of the most important aspects you need to lead with is the keywords you use. Planning this prior to writing the content is recommended. Consider what keywords are most associated with the topic and utilize those as much as possible. Knowing the right keywords will likely require you to know the market well and what others in the industry are posting. Your keywords should be chosen based on what people are actively searching for, so catering your posts to the latest trends is highly recommended. If you aren’t sure how to get started on strategic keyword usage, don’t fret! There are dozens of online databases that you can use, like Word Tracker, to help. Not only does this assist you in carefully choosing keywords, but this is also market research that is invaluable to you as a business owner. By choosing your posts based on need and then stacking those relevant posts with the right keywords, you are likely to boost your SEO rating so that more people visit you website, read your content, and subscribe to your services!
Capitalize on Images
We live in a visually driven society, and your online presence is no different! If you are already using images in your content, great! Keep it up! If you aren’t, you should start immediately. If you fall into the camp of people who have been using images regularly in the content that you are posting, be sure to follow some of these basic guidelines in optimizing them, because, yes, refining what you are doing to make it better is what business is all about!
Size and placement – The file size for the photos you use is very important for your SEO ranking mostly because this affects load time. If your photo size is too big and it slows down your page being loaded, this will greatly affect the traffic on your page.
Title and caption – Giving the photos used for your content a little caption along with a solid title really helps to optimize the image, and in turn, the entire post. Be very intentional with this caption by utilizing the keywords related to it while still remaining very brief in the overall description.
File name – Be sure that the image is saved with a strategic file name utilizing those relevant keywords. So, instead of a series of numbers and letters that many JPEG files comes standard as, name the photo something related to the content. Your intentionality for the sake of your SEO will do wonders even in these small details!
Make Your Content Shareable
Now that you have created a well thought out, strategic, and visibly pleasing content, you will want to make it easy for viewers to share it with their followers. One of the most beautiful (and sometimes painful) aspects of social media is how easy and fast information can be spread. With just the push of a button, your content can be shared and made available to a whole new pool of potential clients/followers/subscribers for them to click on, and clicks in the digital world are like gold. There are several resources, like Simple Sharing Buttons, where you can make custom “share” buttons to post to the many popular social media sites.
When it comes to your business, your online representation and SEO matters a great deal in terms of success. We, at tekRescue, pride ourselves on taking your online presence to the next level while putting the highest priority on network safety. If you are looking to take your business to the next level, consider letting us take care of your cyber presence so that you can focus on the big picture, creative aspects of business that you love!