Tips for Getting Started With Search Engine Optimization
Tips for Getting Started with SEO
I recently sent out a newsletter that touched on the topic of search strategy and methodology, and how search engines determine results for searches.
It might be a bit mind-boggling to try to understand how this could apply to your business. But what’s important is that, bottom line, you need to ensure that your website is working for you. If your website is not optimized to rank in the search results, your will find yourself way down in the search results and your chances of getting “clicked’ on are slim. You are wasting your valuable marketing dollars.
Work with your web developer to ensure that some of these tips are employed right away. These are easy fixes and shouldn’t encompass a major overhaul of your website or cost you a ton of money.
Do your research
Spend some time searching for words and terms that you think people would use when searching for a product or service such as yours. Engage employees and family members in this endeavor to get other perspectives. Which key terms are turning up the top results for your offering and for your competitors?
Create local content
If I had a pizza joint in my town of Cambridge, Ontario, I would create pages that contained key terms, important to people searching for my restaurant. An obvious choice might be “best takeout pizza in Cambridge Ontario”. I would make sure that I had my restaurant listed in Google Places for Business, Google+, Yelp! and any other local mapping services.
Create specific content
Locally used nicknames or other colloquial terms for towns or neighborhoods should be used in your webpages. For example, in our town of Cambridge, our section of town is called Galt and I would create content for those people that might use that moniker. In the close by town of Hamilton, Ontario, which we sometimes call “Steel Town” or “The Hammer”, it would make sense to create pages that contained that city’s nicknames. I Googled the term “nicknames for Hamilton Ontario”. Have a look at what Wikipedia came up with: List of City Nicknames in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames_in_Canada
Choosing your URL
If you are just starting out and choosing a website name, consider including key words in the URL. This strategy can create terrific results for getting found. If you already have your website, you can make sure to add important key words in URLs of the pages within your site, such as the reviews/comments page. For example:
www.jimspizza.com/best-pizza-in-cambridge-ontario
Content Creation by Users
Your customers, users and followers are excellent sources of content for your website. Anything you do to engage them in your business will provide more for Google to scan and recognize. Here are some examples:
Get lots of testimonials and include them on your own site and motivate your customers with a perk to upload reviews to Facebook, Google+, Yelp! and TripAdvisor.
Motivate followers and likes on social media through a simple reward: think free pizza or a coupon. Google uses these “social signals” in their search algorithms.
Ask your customers “how they found you” and reward that channel with more time and money
Like this blog? A simple click can let you stay in touch: www.customerattraction.com/join you can unsubscribe anytime and we never ever abuse our email fans.