In today’s digital landscape, having a robust online presence means more to a small business than ever before. From Social Media, to paid ads, influencer marketing, and more – many businesses live and die by their online marketing. SEO, however, still remains king in most industries. The reason for this is the essence of inbound marketing – putting yourself in front of people who are actively searching for your products and services. No one does it better than SEO. So, how do you improve your SEO and increase your organic traffic?
Technical SEO
Square one begins with the back end of your website. Google and other search engines crawl your site looking for key indicators to help them understand where they should place you in the searches, and for what keywords you should show up for. In this process, they often find red flags such as 404 errors, missing titles, etc. These red flags can negatively affect where your website ranks, and prevent you from increasing organic traffic if left unresolved. Cleaning these up, and developing a keyword strategy on your site is imperative to getting good results.
Content
An easy way to increase organic traffic on your website is to produce quality content. Search engines rely heavily on the visible content on your site to help them know what keywords to rank for. One of the most beneficial ways to expand this is to write blogs. To start, take 15 minutes and make a list of all the questions you hear from your clients and prospects during the sales process. Then, use these to make a blog calendar. As you continue to build content on your site, search engines will see that you have a wealth of information to offer your searchers, and boost you in the rankings.
Links
The Keystone of SEO is link building. Google is like a popularity contest, and each link you receive from another website is like a vote in the contest. So, the more votes you get from various websites, the better you will perform. At its core, links are what drives Google’s ability to recognize how much authority your website actually has. The best way to help increase your organic traffic is to drive these links. These can come in a few forms, the most common of which are directory links (like Yelp) and Guest Posts (contributing to an article about your industry on another website).
Ultimately, anyone can help themselves increase organic traffic, but typically hiring professionals will generate faster results with a much more robust strategy.
