For many small business owners, the idea of optimizing a website for search engines sounds like a daunting and complicated process. But if you’re just getting started, it doesn’t have to be so intimidating. Here are 3 things you can do to boost your search engine rankings and generate more traffic.
1) Connect Google Search Console
Problems affecting the health your website can be a big burden on your SEO success. Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool that gives you updates on the health of your website. Setting it up is easy to do yourself, you just need “verify” your website.
Sign in to the search console with your free Google account. If you already have Google Analytics connected to your website, here’s a good chance your site will “auto-verify”. If you have to do it manually, there are several ways but the easiest for most is the “HTML tag”. Grab it and insert it into your site head with your other meta tags.
Once verified, Google Search Console will alert you to all kinds of problems if they arise. These include crawling errors, security problems, and more. Review these as they are emailed to you to stay ahead of potential SEO issues.
2) Dig Into What Your Competitor Is Doing
Competition is good for a lot of reasons. For one, you can learn a lot by taking a close look what your best competitor is doing. This is especially true when it comes to SEO. Take a close look at the websites that are beating yours for the search terms that matter most. Here’s what to look at:
- Content: The actual text on the page; are they using keywords you don’t? How often are the keywords you’re targeting at present on the page?
- SEO Titles: What keywords are your competitors using in their page title tags? These will often tell you a lot about the main terms being targeted.
- Page Structure: How does their main menu compare to yours? Do they have whole pages dedicated to topics when you don’t?
If you want to get more advanced, use a tool to scan your competitors website and give you insight. SEMRush is a great tool with a free trial. Bonus, it has a lot of other SEO tools in addition to competitor research.
3) Check Your Site For The Most Common Problems
If your website is full of issues, it’s going to just absolutely kill your SEO advantage. A quick check for common problems will help you avoid search ranking disaster. Remember, search engines want to provide the best experience for their searchers. Follow our guide to checking your website for the 3 most common SEO problems.
