You plucked up the courage and decided to follow your dream of
starting your own business – by all accounts, this is a praiseworthy move but
also very bold. Today’s business world is more of an arena than a children’s
park which means that you need to fight to get noticed.
While this is not a reason to get cold feet about your business
venture, it is a call to do whatever is in your power to grow your business. To
achieve this, you need to increase sales, which is something you can do only if
you attract more people to your website and consequently, to your
products/services. So, let’s take a look at some ideas about how you can get
your website to rank higher on the search results list.
Improve user experience
Believe it or not, when ranking is in question, Google’s intent
is not to complicate your life in the early beginning of your solo business
career. The idea behind the algorithms and ranking factors is to provide the
audience with first and foremost relevant, and also safe and pleasant search
results. This means that to rank high, your website has to fulfill certain
standards when it comes to user experience.
Ideally, your audience would come to your website, spend a few
minutes browsing and absorbing the content and proceed to purchase a product or
a service – and this pattern of behavior shows Google that your website can be
trusted. So, for starters, make the content readable by breaking chunks of text
into paragraphs and adding bulleted points. In addition to that,
your audience will respond better to short simplified sentences as well as
other additions such as infographics, photos, videos, quizzes, etc.
Research keywords from the audience’s perspective
Inexperienced entrepreneurs tend to stick to certain keywords
because they have a direct link to their business. However, the truth is that
such keywords will not necessarily bring you the conversion that you are
looking for and perhaps they might not even increase your website traffic.
Imagine that you have an agency that offers translation services, do you really
think that ‘translate’ as a keyword is your only option?
Simply put yourself in the perspective of your audience and
google the word ‘translate’: you will see Google translate and many other free tools
take up the first side of the search results and not translation agencies. This
means that a person googling ‘translate’ actually wants to quickly translate a
word or a couple of sentences. Businesses and individuals who need something important
to be translated by experts will google something like ‘business translation’
or ‘professional translation’ which only shows how much you can learn from
walking in your customers’ shoes.
Focus on guest blogging
Since you are taking your first steps in the world of business,
it is wise to get connected with established websites that have good ranking
and that are reputable. If you wish for them to post a link to your website on
theirs, you would naturally have to return the favor. This mutual hyperlinking
is called link building and it is best done via guest blogging.
However, you need to resist the urge to overstuff your content
with keywords and links and publish it everywhere you can, including suspicious
blogs. For a beginner, it may seem as if the quantity is the key, while in
reality, it is the quality. Therefore, any startups and even businesses that
have been operational for some time tend to use whitelabel SEO services and leave link building to experts. An agency that
offers them will analyze the backlinks and earn you a high position on Google’s
results page by ensuring there are no spammy links, dubious blogs, etc.
Also Read: 3 Useful SEO Tactics for Marketers
See to the technical side of your website
Although your startup’s website needs to also be attractive in
terms of colors, fonts, and other elements, it needs to, above all, be
functional. From your point of view, it may be fulfilling those standards but
if you have a high bounce rate, then you definitely need to change something if
you wish to grow your customer base and not lose it.
So, it is of paramount importance that you make your website
mobile responsive because people tend to search for information and do their
shopping while they are on the move – going to and from work or lectures.
Additionally, you need to boost your website’s loading speed since
people nowadays don’t have any time to lose and if your website takes too long
to load, they will simply close it without giving it another glance. Also, it
would be good to switch to HTTPS especially since Google Chrome is marking
sites with HTTP as unsafe.
Mind the content’s quality
You have probably realized by now the importance of the content
on your startup’s website. It is what draws the audience in and what can drive
prospective customers away. It is a powerful tool that, in the hands of
somebody skillful, can help you build your reputation, improve website traffic,
and boost conversion.
When it comes to your blog, ensure that
the topics are relevant and trendy because that would get
people to set aside some time to read the pieces. That means you need to keep
up with the latest trends in your area of business, be it the fashion or
automotive industry. You need to offer insightful pieces of advice that are
related to your business, and that will also engage them. If you get it right,
your audience will see your startup as an expert in its field, even though it
is still in its infancy and they will gladly purchase your products or
services.
Final thoughts
The SEO efforts you implement today will be the seeds of
success that will bloom tomorrow. The process might not be quick but you will
get long-term results which is why your startup needs to rely on SEO to grow.
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