I wanted to end the year with a few suggestions to make your search presence better in 2017. Some items to add to your resolution list to help you succeed by presenting your brand to clients and customers in a more complete and comprehensive way in 2017. Here are some tips based on experiences I’ve had with clients and prospects in recent months.
Work on your content
Content is king in search. Google wants to present the best “answer” to search queries and I see a lot of businesses scraping by with generic, short content that doesn’t differentiate them. You know your business. Your site should have a page dedicated to every concept you would want to get found for and have a thorough explanation of what that product or service is and why someone should choose you. I say it over and over, you need a page for every concept. The good news is it isn’t that expensive to write good thorough content. It should be grammatically correct but have your own voice. You can do it.
A Little SEO, A Little PPC, A little Social
Your brand is now an entity online, and the borders between your Facebook page, your website, your Google business page, and your LinkedIn profile become blurred to the user. They think of you as one brand and you need to have content everywhere. Invest a little bit in each area. The good news is social is just a use of your time or maybe a small piece of budget to promote a post now and then. Dedicate a little bit of budget to a Pay Per Click program like Google Adwords and a little to make sure your SEO is aimed properly and maybe building up some SEO strength. As long as you are moving forward, you can make progress. You can expand on what is working. The Adwords traffic that comes to your site can help you determine what to focus on for SEO to bring in free traffic down the road. Having a presence all over the internet has even more impact. Your PPC program can be very, very specific for your most profitable or important service, but can still do a great job of bringing in business.
Invest in link building
This is the hardest part of SEO, and where content is king, links are queen and probably half of the court. It is still a huge piece of whether you can rank or not. There are many links and relationships you can get on your own, but this is probably where bringing in a good SEO can help the most. Even if you can do all of the on site writing and targeting yourself, you should spend a little money on taking advantage of an SEO that has relationships that can build you solid links without you having to do all of the work. Make sure the links you get are reputable. Use a tool like MOZ open site explorer to make sure links are not from spammy sites that will get you in trouble. They will give you a few free tests each day I believe before asking you to subscribe. At one time, it was all about getting lots of links, but now it is more about quality. We have programs to just help you by building quality links to build your site strength.
Be Specific with Your Content
We covered writing more content up top, but also remember that people have short attention spans and you need to be specific to their needs. Especially with PPC, where you are paying to send someone to your site. If someone searches for a specific issue like “toilet leaks” and lands on your home page, you are much more likely to lose them. You need a page that discusses how you fix their toilet and a headline when they land so they see you are going to solve their problem. People get caught up in presenting their brand or logos. Think of the visitor. You are trying to solve their problems and they want to see that as soon as they land and then need a quick and obvious way to call or schedule with you or you will lose them. Try to have a page for everything that may lead to a customer or client. You do the work for them. Don’t make them do the work, or they will go find another site that has what they need right away. You have less than 2 seconds to convince them they have found the right place.
You Better Be Mobile Friendly By Now
This goes without saying. Look into getting an SSL certificate too as I mentioned in a few prior posts.
Thanks to everyone for a wonderful year. We look forward to helping more and more businesses out in 2017. Just give us a call.
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