Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to the livelihood of your business.

If your customers can’t find you on Google (and to a lesser degree, Yahoo and Bing) then odds are your competition has already has! And not only is good SEO important, you need to think of it like an oil change for your business. It’s something that needs to be done on a consistent basis, with the right messaging, reaching the right audience. If you build the best lemonade stand in the world, but no one can find it, or if you advertise to people looking for grape juice, odds are that your project won’t have the effect you desire.
Generally speaking, the most important items needed to rank well are links to your website and well written, relevant content. The items take time and have to be done with high quality in mind. In addition to these two items, there are literally hundreds of factors that can impact your ranking within Google, and not all factors are weighed equally.

Here are five important SEO tips that you can use today to help your site’s rankings today, and to be well positioned for the year ahead.

1. Have an influencer who is a subject matter expert

As you might expect and influencer is someone in your business (or brand, or product arena) that people will listen to and pay attention when that person speaks. When it comes to optimizing your website, having someone who can write great blog content, make videos, or author your newsletter will definitely help your website rankings. Why is this? More and more, Google and others are making sure that the site has high quality, relevant content and is providing real value.

2. Implement a content-marketing strategy.

Every website needs to have a content strategy that is focused on the top keywords relevant to the site. When you make content such as blog posts, videos, reports, host webinars, or provide other information, it serves as a reference point that people can refer back to. For example, if you write a blog post about “How To Train Your Dog”, that might get seen by Google and ranked for the words in the title, and it will only help if your other content has to do with the same words, and even better, if it’s shared on social media properties. When you go about providing content this way, it will help to raise your authority from the major search engines. Be sure to do this on a consistent basis – fresh content will be rewarded.

3. Your site needs links to other pages that have authority – the more the better 

Now that you have an influencer creating content for your website, it’s time to have that recognized by other sites. For example, if you make blueberry pies, it’s more valuable if you can get the Food Network to accept your article or repost it on their Twitter feed than, say, Ma and Pa Kettle’s hometown page. It all has to do with how Google ranks the other sites that are pointing back to your site. There are two approaches to this task – put out a lot of great content to many platforms and sites, or hire an SEO or PR agency to make sure you are visible. There are also various tools that can be used to analyze your competition, their links, and where they came from. Once you have that information, you might be able to leverage that and have your content put on similar sites. In other words, whatever your competition is doing, you should probably be pursuing a similar strategy.

4. Mobile, mobile, mobile!  

Probably the hottest topic of search engine optimization in 2015 was the big change from Google in regards to mobile compatibility. This was also known as “Mobilegeddon”. In the Spring of this year, Google began to check and see that your site would display correct on laptops, tablets, phones and other mobile devices. If not, the site would be penalized. We had some clients that opted not to make their sites mobile friendly and saw rankings fall from page one to page three, four or five over the course of less than six weeks. Fortuantely, we were able to help those clients regain their old positions with 100% white hat SEO tactics, and of course, making sure the site passed Google’s mobile test. If you want to see how your site stacks up, go to this link: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

5. Your site should be moved from http:// to https://

In August of this year, this tweet was sent out: Why You Need HTTPS

What’s that extra “S” at the end? You might have noticed that when you do any online banking or shopping. That “S” stand for security, and if your website ends with it, great. Google will see your site as secure. Moving your site to HTTPS now will put you ahead of your competition as we move into the New Year. There aren’t too many companies that are aware of this coming change; you heard it here first! If you have a webmaster on staff, be sure that make this change before the New Year arrives!

Have additional questions about any of the topics covered here? Looking to grow your business or want more customers? Call or Email us today to find out how we can make sure that your customers can find YOU!