Search engine optimization (SEO) is something every website owner needs to understand. If you aren’t in a highly competitive market, you may be able to spend less time on an SEO campaign, but it’s still important to keep yourself tuned in. Running your business is still your top priority, but don’t you want to make sure people on the Web can find your business too?
The best way to boost your rankings in Google and Bing is to hire a web professional to run your SEO campaign. In the meantime, here is a list of things you can do on your own once a week to make your site more visible.
Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools
Google has given us so many things; Analytics and Webmaster are two of the best tools to monitor your site’s traffic and make sure nothing is broken on your website. If you haven’t signed up for an account yet, do it now!
Now that you have an account, check your Google Tools once a week. Webmaster allows you to quickly check to make sure your sitemaps are well linked and nothing on your site is broken. If you see a page missing or a broken link, fix it. Search engines crawlers can’t find your pages if they aren’t linked to your sitemap.
Using Analytics, you can see how many new and returning visitors are going to your site each month, which pages are the most popular, how long people spend on each page, and how they found your site in the first place. This kind of data is invaluable to the businessperson running their own SEO campaign.
If you know your services or products page isn’t getting a lot of love, then it’s time to make some changes. On the flip side, if you see that your videos are attracting a lot of attention, it’s time to make some more videos!
Update Your Tags
Whether your site is a basic HTML site or on a CMS platform like WordPress, updating the title and meta tags is easy.
Every page on your site should have a title and a corresponding title tag. If you frequently add blog posts or new pages to your site, it can be easy to forget to include them, though. That’s why we suggest checking your pages once a week to make sure they all have title tags. If you don’t have a lot of pages, it’s easy to do this manually. If you do have a lot of pages, just check your Webmaster Tools and they can detect tags for you.
Once title tags are in place, check metadata too. Meta tags won’t make or break your site, but it’s still a good idea to check them out and make sure you don’t have any duplicate data.
Blog
This is when people start to roll their eyes and say, “Who has time to blog?” But blogging once a week can really improve your site’s SEO. You don’t have to write an essay every week, but post a short piece (chock-full of keywords, of course) at least once a week.
Search engines love blogs, and visitors to your site will too. New posts mean new content to index. Plus, recent updates on your site show new visitors that you’re on top of your game and give them another way to engage with your site. Set aside 30 minutes each week and crank out a blog on the latest happenings at the office. When you get your first I-read-your-recent-blog phone call, you’ll be glad you did.
SEO doesn’t have to take your attention away from your other work. Integrate these steps into your weekly routine; a little work can go a long way.
For more help, you can read about the SEO services we offer or contact us today.