You’ve final­ly tak­en the leap into entre­pre­neur­ship and have just opened your first busi­ness. After devel­op­ing an awe­some web­site, pass­ing out fly­ers, and hav­ing your logo print­ed on mugs, the cus­tomers are sup­posed to be arriv­ing in droves, right? Or maybe you’ve been in busi­ness for a while, but aren’t receiv­ing the cus­tomer response you used to. Not so fast. 

Have you considered your website ranking in Google? 

Your online pres­ence can make a huge dif­fer­ence in your cus­tomer traf­fic. Invest­ing time and ener­gy in man­ag­ing and increas­ing it can be worth­while for your bot­tom line. 

As one of the most cost-effec­tive mar­ket­ing strate­gies, tak­ing the time to under­stand your web­site rank­ings can pro­vide valu­able insight into your cus­tomer base and increase your brand’s vis­i­bil­i­ty. Web­site rank­ings, also known as SEO or search engine opti­miza­tion, can make or break a busi­ness in this dig­i­tal era. It is in your best inter­est to under­stand how it works and how to get in the game. We’ve pro­vid­ed some help­ful tips on how to improve web­site rank­ing and ensure your cus­tomers “see” you. 

Content Is King

Hav­ing com­pelling, inter­est­ing, and engag­ing con­tent on your web­site is crit­i­cal to cap­tur­ing not only your customer’s atten­tion but will improve your web­site rank­ing in Google as well. Tak­ing the time to know what key­words your tar­get audi­ence may use in an online search or phras­es that may be used to describe your busi­ness, will help in devel­op­ing appro­pri­ate local­ized con­tent for your web­site that cap­tures attention. 

Writ­ing the con­tent for the user should be the end goal in cre­at­ing suc­cess­ful web­site pages. Also, pay close atten­tion to your head­ings and any tech­ni­cal con­tent you may have. Include vari­a­tions of your tar­get key­words through­out the page. If you’ve includ­ed links, make sure they are work­ing and not bro­ken. Your con­tent length should match the aver­age length of pages with good con­tent. Make sure to update the web­site con­tent reg­u­lar­ly, as this keeps your web­site and busi­ness rel­e­vant. Keep it fresh!Content Is King

It’s all in the Data

Specif­i­cal­ly, meta­da­ta refers to descrip­tions about the con­tent of your web­site pages. When refresh­ing and revis­ing your web­site, meta­da­ta should not be over­looked. It is the key to effec­tive­ly man­ag­ing the con­tent of your web­site and can be either sim­ple or com­plex, depend­ing on how you use it. Meta­da­ta helps your cus­tomers find you on the inter­net and allows you to man­age the con­tent easier. 

There are three types of metadata in website development: 

  • Title meta­da­ta refers to page titles list­ed at the top of the brows­er and is list­ed as the head­line in search engine results.
  • Descrip­tion meta­da­ta is a brief overview of what is includ­ed in the page con­tent. This is cru­cial since it is an invite for cus­tomers to look into your website. 
  • Key­word meta­da­ta is less used but it is good to have your busi­ness key­words and phras­es iden­ti­fied and added. 

Don’t Be Afraid to Tag it

Alt tags, also known as alter­na­tive text descrip­tions, work won­ders for images and video on your web­site. They are gen­er­al­ly used to describe the image or video on your page and are best when kept between 5 and 15 words total. Alt tags are help­ful for many rea­sons. If the image does not load or if an indi­vid­ual is using an assist­ed device to access the site, your cur­rent and poten­tial cus­tomers still have access to your site. Basi­cal­ly, keep alt tags short and sweet! 

Last­ly, when cre­at­ing rel­e­vant links on your web­site, make sure to write the name of the link rather than “click here”. Includ­ing the name increas­es your site’s vis­i­bil­i­ty. When in doubt, remem­ber that it is always a good idea to use key­words when you have an oppor­tu­ni­ty. Well, that was sim­ple enough! If you have ques­tions or would like to take your web­site to the next lev­el, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll take it from there. Vis­it our web­site to learn more about improv­ing web­site rank­ing in Google!