Many businesses already have a web site. They understand the necessity of internet marketing in today’s world. Yet they wait patiently for sales that never come. The missing piece might be knowing how to improve SEO for their site. This is the beginning of a series of articles that will examine specific areas of SEO and give you more detailed information on how you can improve your internet presence.
How to Improve SEO
The answers may be multiple but they are all simple.
1. Search engines aren’t listing you at all
It’s possible that search engines aren’t even indexing your site. This can be for a few reasons. For example, let’s say someone copied all the content from your page and made their own site with it. Google will only index one of those two sites.
Won’t the search engine give preference to the first site created? No. It won’t.
Your site could be blacklisted for a few reasons. For example, if you are on a shared server with your internet provider and that same server has a client who has been flagged as a spammer, your site could be affected too. This can be mitigated but it illustrates the many things behind the scenes that might determine the love-hate relationship between you and search engines like Google.
2. Your site is listing poorly on search engines
Some people think merely having a site is all they need. After all, it’s on the internet so it will be found. Well, if your site fits thousands of others for the same search they can’t all be on the first page.
There are many, many factors that affect ranking. There are entire companies devoted to search engine optimization. They get paid hundreds, often thousands, of dollars each month to try and push search ranking for their clients.
But there are basic things that you can do. First of all is having a web site that loads fast and has good content. Page load speed matters. Your web developer (y’know, an awesome company like Crimson Web Design) can assist with that.
Google now gives higher priority to well written content. They want visitors to have a good experience on the web. Social media integration is important because it spreads your presence across the web. Site security matters (see #1, above).
You also want a mobile responsive site. Google now focuses more on that than desktop sites because most content is now being viewed from mobile devices.
Crimson offers a free site analysis as part of our free estimate. We can help you discover where your site is today so you can move forward in the right direction.
3. Poorly written content
Well written content affects not only search engine ranking (discussed above) but also your visitor’s experience. Does anyone remember MySpace? It was a great idea, having a personal site that was so customizable. But soon it was populated with flashing neon banners, illegible content, and background music no one wanted to hear. In the same way that turned off visitors to those sites, a visitor deserves a great experience when visiting your site. It is important to develop content that is clear, informative, and engaging. It helps bring visitors in and keeps them coming back.
4. Lack of social media
We have discussed in a few other places about the impact of social media in your marketing efforts. It is so prevalent that it is hard to find someone not using at least some form of it. Even if they don’t use it, they still see the results of it when they browse around online. We want those results to be yours. Incorporate social media links and feeds into your site. It is simple and effective cross-marketing.
5. Inattention to updates
The internet is changing daily. It isn’t only content but also how it is regulated, monitored, and updated in the background. Constant changes in coding requirements, algorithms for SEO, and content management updates requires someone to take care of those things. Web sites are not a “build it and leave it” world. It is why many of our own clients extend that service even after the original service agreement ends to avoid both the time to keep up with all the updates and the headache of doing so.
These are only a few of the factors to consider when examining the effectiveness of your web site. Often it isn’t that the web site itself is not valuable (having one always is) but simply that it needs some attention. Crimson Web Design can help you benchmark where you are. Then, we help you plan how to get where you’re going.
That whole thing about “it’s not a destination but a journey?” Yeah, it’s true. Knowing how to improve SEO can make that journey a whole lot easier.
Follow us as we deliver a series of articles on how you can identify the specific areas where you can improve your SEO, along with detailed steps on how to improve it.