By Josh Bruce
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways for small business owners to get customers to their websites. There are many different ways to improve the SEO of your website, but here are 10 quick tips you can implement on your website to get SEO benefits.
1. Include Your Main Keyword in the Title and URL
You’ve done your keyword research and you know which key phrase you want to rank for. Including keywords in the title tag and the URL will really help to rank in Google. You don’t need to keyword stuff the title, just a simple phrase that includes the keyword. Remember, only 65 characters are seen in Google SERPs.
2. Fix Broken Backlinks
Links are one of the most important SEO factors used by Google to rank a website. If you have pages on your website that have expired and show up as a 404 page, then the website won’t gain the link juice from the website that links to that page.
You can see which websites link to your website in Google Search Console or with a broken backlink checking tool. You can either 301 redirect the link, ask them to update the link, or republish the page which has a 404.
3. Steal Competitors’ Broken Links
In addition to researching your own broken backlinks, you can also research your competitors’ broken links. If you get a list of all the pages that have been removed from your competitor’s website and which websites have linked to them, you can contact the website that links to the 404 page and offer them a link to your own website as a replacement resource.
If you don’t have a page that resembles the expired content, you can set one up and use Wayback Machine to see the expired content.
4. Steal Competitors’ Keywords
One of the best ways to do quick keyword research is to scan the websites of high rankings competitors and see which search terms they are ranking for. With Ahrefs, you can use the Keywords Explorer Tool to get a full list of all the keywords that are driving traffic to your competitors’ websites. This could show you new keyword opportunities and ways to get more customers to your site.
5. Use Yoast (If You’re on WordPress)
WordPress is the most popular CMS on the internet, and is a great platform for bloggers and small business owners. If you want to SEO optimize you’re pages, Yoast is one of the best and easiest tools out there, and it’s free! By installing the Yoast plugin there’s a huge range of things you’ll be able to easily implement, including setting titles and meta descriptions for each page, canonical URLs, sitemaps and more.
6. Install an SSL Certificate
Moving your website over to SSL will give you a minor SEO boost to your website. It could also help with conversion rate if you’re on an e-commerce site as some customers won’t purchase on a website that isn’t secure.
7. Find Proven Content Ideas
If you’re stuck coming up with content ideas – why not look for similar content to your niche that’s already out there and has been linked to and shared on social media. If you can get a spin on an existing article (don’t copy it!) then it could also be a great way to generate natural backlinks to your website.
8. Target Keywords with Below-Average CTR
If you set up your website with Google Search Console, you’ll be able to view the number of impressions and click throughs that each of your pages has in Google SERPs. Look for pages with low click through rate (CTR) and look at improving the title tag and meta description.
You need to be careful if you’re removing the title tag — don’t delete the keyword from the title — but consider having additional information that will encourage click throughs. The meta description is an opportunity to sell your website, if you offer something like free next day delivery, including this information can really help click throughs.
9. Use Review Stars on Google
Integrating review stars in the SERPs is another excellent way of increasing click through rate. You can’t integrate Google My Business reviews into your website, but Google will accept reviews from a trusted third party. If you have 5 stars under your website in the SERPs then it will increase the number of visitors to your website.
10. Canonical URLs for Duplicate Content
Finally, if you have more than one version of the same page on your website, set canonical URLs so Google only recognizes one version. This means one page will gain all the “SEO power” and it isn’t diluted across many different pages.