Inexpensive SEO Tips

In its simplest form, SEO is the art of finding the most likely search terms and keywords that relate to your business and placing them strategically on your website, in your content and on your social media profiles. It’s then up to you to monitor your traffic and search rankings and adjust your methods to continue ranking well. Since SEO requires a lot of monitoring and maintenance, many businesses choose to hire an SEO company to help them manage. Love it or hate it, SEO is essential to ranking well and having a strong online presence.

Aside from working with an SEO company, there are things you can do on your own to boost your SEO - and it doesn’t have to break your budget.

• Have a responsive website design. A responsive design is the easiest way to ensure that your site is consistent across devices. Visitors get the same experience, and you won’t be penalized by Google for having a site that is not mobile friendly.

• Update your website regularly. The best way to do this is by contributing new content to your blog. You should also give some attention to your website from time to time to make sure that the contact information, services, tone, etc. accurately reflect your business.

• Be on social media. You don’t need to be on every social media site, but you should pick a few where you can connect with your audience. Be active on the sites by posting articles, links to your blog and content from other industry experts. Also engage on social media by responding to comments and asking for feedback.

• Create videos. Google gives preference to video content and bumps it up in the search results. Videos are also effective at capturing interest, helping people to remember important information and going viral. If there are certain things you can share via video (tutorials, interviews, product launches, facility tours, etc.) give this format a try.

• Claim your local profiles. Review sites like Yelp and Google+ have profiles set up for local businesses. Claim yours and make sure that all contact information is correct. Add a few photos or videos and encourage customer reviews to complete your profile. This will help in the local searches.

Include keywords. Just be smart about it. If you overstuff your content, you’ll be penalized. Instead, use keywords naturally in your content, on your website and in social media. Write for humans, not for search engines.