You have put in the work for a website, but you haven’t seen much of an increase in traffic. Why might that be? For a lot of companies, the lack of web traffic has much to do with the fact they are not coming up when potential customers search for their goods or services. These days, if you do not rank well on Google, your company will suffer. So, what can you do about it?
Here are a few hints to improve your SEO (search engine optimization) or the items that Google looks at when they rank websites.
1. Helpful Content Google has moved beyond simply having the “right” keywords throughout your website. Now they track how long people remain on your page and whether they seem to be able to navigate and find what they are looking for with ease. If a customer cannot find what it is that they need quickly, they will usually leave your site to find it elsewhere. So having a well organized site that is helpful and easy to navigate will register with Google that it has helpful content, and in turn, will rank your website better.
2. Images and videos with relevant keywords Having photos and videos on your site not only help it look better, but they help you rank better too! Be sure to have keywords included in your image or video description to help boost your page and to help your customers understand what is important about what you included. Videos are particularly great at boosting your page because they require some sort of interaction with the page, and customers will linger longer to watch a video.
3. Page speed Another very important factor in Google ranking is the website speed. People do not want to wait more than a couple seconds for a page to load, and often times, if it does not load quick enough, they will get impatient and leave the website. There are many ways to increase website speed, including limiting the plugins used, enabling caching, and updating your theme. The faster your page runs, the less chance you have of people leaving your site.
4. Errors or broken links Having broken links or error pages can severely hurt your ranking. It is important to regularly check on the health of your website and insure that any links that are included are still working. The Internet is a growing changing entity, and websites require regular maintenance to ensure that you are still connected properly and that your customers can easily follow links to and from your page.
5. Social Media While it is not as big of a deal now as it use to be, traffic from your social media pages to your website also have an effect on the ranking of your website – This means that it is important to have posts with links to your site on your social media accounts. It use to be that you needed to have as many posts as possible to boost your ranking but Google has gotten smarter and now they track quality over quantity. Make your posts valuable to your customers; insure that they are provided useful information and that drives them to your website for further information.
6. Mobile device compatible Nowadays the majority of all searches are done on mobile devices, so if your website is not mobile device friendly, you need to make that change right away. Most website editors already are set up to display your website on multiple different platforms, but if your website is not, there are many free plugins or templates that include this functionality. It is also helpful to have a well thought out meta description – that is the short line of copy just below your company name in a Google search. Ensure that it is optimized for Google and clearly captures what your company offers so that mobile users can determine if it is what they are looking for without even clicking on anything.
7. Voice Search Voice search is a newer component to your Google ranking with the rise of smart speakers. There are more and more people who do most of their searching by speaking only – either to their smart speaker or to their phone. This is changing the way questions are phrased in a search engine; they are more like common conversation rather than the choppy phrases used when someone types a question. And if someone uses a voice search, the answer to their question will be read aloud, so it is important that the information that comes up for your website is well written so as to be understood when read aloud.
There are many aspects of your website that can contribute to your Google ranking and in turn, to your potential customer flow. Staying on top of all the changes can be a lot of work – that’s why I am here to help!
I specialize in managing websites, social media marketing and email newsletters. I keep up to date on the things that make your company stand out among all the rest.
You can follow me on Facebook and sign up for my email newsletters for other tips and tricks to staying on top!
And if you need some extra help – feel free to contact me and see what I can do to help you and your company branch out in this ever-changing digital marketplace.