Most businesses want to improve their website’s search engine rank. To quickly increase visitors, you could invest in Google ads that would place your website at the top of result pages. Targeting your organic search engine ranking outside of ad placements, however, will produce more valuable, sustainable results.
Ideally, you’ll be starting with a well-designed, mobile-friendly website. After that, follow these guidelines for search engine success.
1. Optimize Your Website Copy and Code with Keyword Phrases.
First, decide on your business’s keyword phrases. What should potential customers google to retrieve your website listing? Keywords paired with locations are easier to target. For example, if you are a copywriter in Portland, you may choose the key phrase “copywriter Portland” instead of just “copywriter” to drastically reduce the number of websites you are competing against.
After you’ve chosen your keywords, weave them into your headlines and body copy. You can hire a developer or learn a plugin like Yoast to optimize your website code elements, such as the title tag, description meta tag, permalinks, alt tags, and sitemap.
2. On an Ongoing Basis, Create Compelling Content on Your Website.
What articles, videos, or resources can you publish on your site that people will read, watch, and share? Creating valuable content is a prerequisite to attracting links from other sites.
3. Regularly Seek Inbound Links from an Array of Sites.
Google values what others say about your site. For example, if you specialize in modern, eco-friendly architecture, you could publish a photo gallery of your most attractive design features, optimize it with your key phrases, and share it on your social media profiles. If a hundred people starting linking to that gallery on their websites or saving photos to their Pinterest boards, it would noticeably improve your website ranking.
If you’re not already listed in them, you can also submit your site to many search engines and dozens of directory sites such as Google My Business, Yelp, and Bing Places.
The field of search engine optimization is intricate and ever-evolving, but careful consideration of the above guidelines should help you start an excellent search engine strategy.
Need Search Engine Optimization Help?
If you need assistance defining your keyword phrases, optimizing the code of your WordPress site, or submitting your site to search engines and directories, please contact me.