Climb the Charts! 10 SEO Techniques to
Put Your Small Business on the Map
So, you have a small business or a website and are looking for SEO tips on how to get more web traffic. You have a clever domain name, and great content, but people just don’t seem to be finding you online.
Well, there are a few different things related to SEO that you can do today to help you rank higher on sites like Google, boosting your web traffic as a result. So if you’re looking SEO techniques for your website or small business that actually work, you’ve come to the right place! In this article, we’ll tell you 10 ways you can climb higher on Google and get the results that you’re looking for!
1. Let Google Help You
SEO can be a tough cookie to crack, especially if you’re trying to break into a competitive niche. But there are a lot of resources out there that can help you get your website off the ground.
Google, in particular, offers a wide variety of tools that are especially helpful. From Google Webmasters to Google Analytics, be sure to have your site linked to all of these tools to help you track what works and what doesn’t.
And if you’re a small business that relies heavily on locals finding you, make sure you’re listed on Google My Business. The name pretty much explains it all, but this will help people in your area find your company when they Google certain key phrases, which obviously can help you establish a local market share.
2. Create Scannable Content
The way that you format the content on your website is extremely important. Google likes websites that have scannable content because it’s easy to read and helps create a good user experience.
Remember, Google wants to recommend sites to users that are both easy to use and informative. SEO practices are designed with this in mind, so creating well-spaced, scannable content is key.
Avoid large blocks of text, break things up with headers, and don’t be afraid to use a picture or video to separate things, too. A helpful tip? Lists are a great way to easily check all of these boxes and create content that users (and sites like Google) will like.
3. Make Navigation Easy
Another key element to creating a solid user experience is perfecting your site’s navigation. A good rule of thumb is, if it takes more than three clicks to get to something on your site, your navigation layout is too complicated. More tips are available online, but it is best to consult a UX design agency like Clay.Global to help you achieve this.
Users want to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly. And the more users that leave your site after a few seconds because it’s hard to navigate, the more Google starts to see your site as an unreliable source.
Creating scannable content and cleaning up your navigation is a great way to ensure that users not only click on your site but stay on it, too.
4. Confirm Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly
Did you know that over 50% of all internet traffic in 2018 came from mobile devices? That’s a trend that shows no signs of going away anytime soon. And it’s because of this that search engines have started to rank mobile-friendly sites higher in their search results.
This means that having a mobile-friendly site nowadays is an absolute must. Not sure if your site is mobile-friendly or not? Don’t worry, figuring out whether or not your site is mobile-friendly is easy thanks to Google’s mobile-friendly checker.
If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, don’t panic. Talk with your host provider and see what steps you need to take to ensure mobile users have a good experience while on your site.
5. Write a Lot of Words
It may be tempting to create a ton of shorter articles so you can produce more content quickly. And while this may work well for larger sites, if you’re just starting out, it’s actually not the best way to go about things.
Research shows that the average word count for the first result of a Google search is around 1,800 words. So making longer, scannable content is what you should be doing, at least at first.
So if you’re niche is extremely competitive, try to create better, longer content than the other sites. You’ll most likely leapfrog a few of them on the search results, making it much easier to get traffic to your site.
6. Get Backlinks from Wikipedia
It’s no secret that a key part of SEO is generating backlinks. In fact, this is probably the most difficult part of the job, as it can take years to establish a solid backlink catalog for your site.
One of the best ways to get quality backlinks, and quickly, is to add your site as a reference to related articles on Wikipedia. Even if you have to create content with missing Wikipedia links in mind, it’s absolutely the best way to get backlinks with a lot of juice from a quality source.
Sure, these links are “nofollow” links and not the coveted “dofollow” links that everyone is after. But a “nofollow” link from a site as credible as Wikipedia has a lot more juice than a “dofollow” link from an unreliable source.
7. Search for Low Competition Key Words
One of the biggest mistakes you can make with your site is to try and compete with the big fish in your niche. That’s why it’s wise to establish a keyword plan that revolves around creating content for high traffic, low competition keywords.
Using Google’s Keyword Planner, find a few keywords in your niche that have a high search volume, but a low competition rate. Then create SEO-friendly posts around those keywords and watch the traffic flow in!
If you have success with a particular keyword, create more articles around that keyword. Don’t waste your time making articles that no one is reading, focus on what works and build off of it.
8. Clean Up Your Old Posts
If you’ve been creating content for a while, odds are that you have some older posts that have good bones but don’t check all of the SEO boxes. Go back and clean up those posts, and even change the date on them, so Google picks them back up again.
It’s easier and quicker to do this than create new content from scratch, and you can really increase your traffic and give your old articles new life as a result. This also confirms that users who find old articles on your site will still be getting that solid user experience that they’ll find when browsing newer articles that you’ve created more recently.
9. Link to Credible Sites
A huge part of SEO is linking to other content inside of your articles. Search engines see this as you providing sources for your work, making you a credible and reliable source yourself.
Both internal and external links are a huge part of creating SEO-friendly content for your website. When using external links, it’s important to link to credible sites that are related to whatever it is you’re talking about.
Don’t be afraid to check the Moz ranking for the sites you’re linking to. And if a site isn’t credible, find a site that has similar information that is, and link to them instead.
10. Don’t Forget About Internal Links
We’ve talked a lot about backlinks, as well as external links, but don’t forget about internal links, too. Linking to relevant articles from your site in other articles is a great way to boost traffic to those articles and keep folks on your site for longer periods of time.
A good tip? Try to link to content that you think is good, but maybe isn’t getting the traffic you want it to. This can help those articles get a bit of a boost, and as a result, help them rank higher on search results, too.
10 SEO Techniques That Actually Work
Well, there you have it! Those are 10 SEO techniques that actually work! So if you’re trying to get your small business or website on the front page of a Google search result, these tips will help you get there!
Remember, everything about SEO revolves around giving people the best user experience possible. So creating content and designing your website with this in mind is extremely important.
Lean heavily on Google, specifically the various tools that they provide creators. Figure out keywords that you can rank for and only create content with those keywords in mind.
Doing this, and putting in the hard work, can help you get those results you’re looking for!
