Consumer attention is fickle, easily swayed by the latest trend or any of a hundred distractions. Successful online businesses rely largely on search engines to keep them at the forefront of customer awareness. Sometimes, expanding SEO reach requires making minor adjustments to your webpages. Other times, it demands that you implement mobile-friendly features, branch beyond Google, refresh your content, revamp your website design or add multimedia interaction.
Be Mobile-Friendly
It is no longer enough for people to be able to find your business easily. They also need to be able to interact seamlessly with your website on a mobile phone. Many customers use mobile devices as their first choice in web searches and online purchases. An ever-increasing number use cellular phones as their only means of interacting on the web. Many mobile-phone users are prepared to purchase before they even reach your website. Your pages must load fast, which you can check with various online tools. Other means that you can utilize to achieve mobile optimization are visual hierarchies, where more important items are bigger, and explicit signposts that direct your client through the website pages. Finally, any forms your customer needs to fill out should be simple.
Look Beyond Google
Many consumers obtain their information and advice from social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook. By using Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest for search engine optimization, you can achieve an expansive social reach. Another tool that does not use Google is email marketing. Engaging your email subscribers is still an effective tool for SEO. Guest posting is another way to optimize your business, putting your website in front of thousands if done properly. Even Mapquest is useful for local SEO since it helps improve your ranking and visibility in search results.
Update Content
Most marketers and business owners are well-aware of how crucial content is to drive traffic and appeal to search engines. It is a mistake, however, to post a few articles and leave your website to fend for itself. Search engines crawl your website not only because your content makes it easy to find but also because they are searching for relevance. It is only with relevant content that the search engines can rank your site. After a few weeks, your content becomes old news to search engines. Google, among others, will overlook you. Therefore, you must post new content regularly. Moreover, you want to appeal to the audiences your content reaches, not just the search engines. This also helps define the relevance of your blogs or articles for SEO. How long your content remains fresh and exciting depends on the subject matter. Many experts suggest you update your content at least every few weeks. Some website owners, however, display new content every couple of days, and for good reason. Evidence suggests most of the traffic your web content generates will occur within the first two days you post it. Do not neglect to update all links that you have on your site as well.
Optimize
You should construct your website not only so search engines can find you but also so that you can generate new leads. This means you need to optimize your website design from the outset. Use technology that makes your content easy for a web crawler to understand. If a search engine can readily interpret your pages, they will quickly make it visible. Text-based content is still the easiest language for search engines to understand. Include any videos and images around the foundation of your text. Double-check that your domain is relevant to your business and that all subdomains redirect to it. Be selective when it comes to your host and content management system. Your host should cater to the type of business you have and produce quick-loading results. Install search directives and set up your primary navigation to be simple. It should easily index your site outside of its home page. Internal links also help with this, but they are not effective if used alone.
Enrich User Experience
You can provide an enjoyable experience on your website that encourages visitors to linger. One enrichment tactic is to make your site memorable so that if someone navigates away for some reason, they can easily return. Make sure the text on your pages provides valuable information. Consider including slideshows and sound effects as well as images or videos, where they fit. Not only does this enrich your visitors’ experience when they interact with your business, but it also adds to the quality of your pages according to search engines. Videos alone have been found to better engage the visitor and improve conversion rates by almost 5 percent. Videos are also versatile and can be used for tutorials and virtual tours.
One of the most efficient means to accomplish the goal of growing a business is by improving SEO reach through content and website design. It takes effort, but the results you’ll get will be worth it in the end.
