SEO Tips
It’s our final day of SEO week! If you’ve missed the other two posts this week, I highly recommend reading those first or this might be a little confusing unless you’re familiar with SEO. Today I am going to be sharing some easy SEO tips that you can use for your small business!
Before I get into all of these tips I wanted to say that this is a collective list. You don’t need to do everything on this list to appear at the top of google; these are just things that can help your SEO. If you want to know more about what exactly SEO is and how to use it, check out my first two posts on SEO that were posted earlier this week.
Optimize Your Page Titles & Meta Descriptions
If you can figure out where your meta descriptions and page titles are in the backend of your website, customizing those can really help with SEO. Usually if you’re using a user-friendly builder it’ll be as simple as a Google Search or some quick looking around on the platform.
Create SEO Friendly URLs
Instead of having a bunch of random letters or numbers or “home 1, home2, home3”; I recommend going in the backend and just changing the titles to the names of the pages. Something as simple as customizing the url slugs can help!
Customize Your 404 Page
If you don’t have Photoshop you can always make a super simple page on Canva. Canva is a free and easy to use design platform that has tons of options for colors, layouts, fonts, and other elements.
Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly
You would think this is a no brainer, but some website builders don’t translate well when it comes to going from desktop to mobile. I always say we want a beautiful desktop site and an absolutely breathtaking mobile version because most of your customers and clients will probably be accessing it from their phone!
Create a Sitemap
A sitemap tells Google which pages and files you think are important in your site. It also provides valuable information about these files. There’s 3 primary kinds of sitemaps and it’s honestly a little too hard to explain in this blog post, but maybe I’ll make my own dedicated post in the near future.
Step Up Your Content
Having amazing content is always great, but maybe think about adding that extra paragraph or filming a short video to go along with it. A lot of people don’t realize that having good content can truly set you apart from other people and help your business.
Well Designed Site
A lot of people when they’re starting out make their own website and I totally get being on a budget and doing as much as you can yourself. When you start growing and you’re able to invest in yourself I always recommend getting a website and/or brand audit to see how functional it actually is. There’s a lot that goes into a website that I don’t think a ton of people who are making their own sites realize. There’s a reason that page goes there and we use this title over this title. There’s always a method to the madness and having a well designed site really does impact how well your website performs.
Niche Down
Narrowing down what your website is about can improve your SEO. If you’re a photographer what kind of photographer are you? If you sell socks, what kind of socks? Even if you offer multiple sessions or loads of different kinds of socks, niching down can help Google sort your website and then advertise it to the right people. The difference between searching for a photographer near me and a newborn photographer near me. They’ll be on your website so they’ll quickly find out you offer more than just that, but you’re still niching down enough for SEO.
Consistency
I think staying consistent can be one of the most difficult parts for business owners, I know I struggle with this still. Get a content calendar, a planner, an assistant, something or someone to help you make sure you’re getting out the content you need to at a consistent rate. I think we all know that if you put in the work consistently that you’ll see results and this is no different.
Use Google Tools and Analytics
I am a big fan of Google Search Console! The Search Console tools help measure your website’s search traffic and performance, it’ll point out issues that need fixed, and help your site look good in Google Search results. I’ve used it for quite some time and if anything happens to my site I get an email almost immediately telling me what the issue is. Then all I need to do is submit that I fixed the issue, and we’re back.
If you want to learn even more tips that could help you out, check out my last post where I talk about why we should use SEO and then how to use it. If you’re here after the fact and want to know when I post, feel free to sign up for my newsletter in the footer below! If you’d rather leave the SEO to the professional, I offer amazing SEO in all of my packages which you can easily view on the ‘Services’ page. Thank you for tuning in and I will see you soon!
Cover photo shot by: Dorothy Louise Photography