As technology progresses, it’s getting easier and easier to manage your business’s online presence. But oftentimes many business owners don’t know where to find the best tools and processes. The following are simple SEO hacks that you can apply for successful business experience.
1. Take Advantage of Google’s Tools
Many SEO tools are free, and not that complicated to use. Since the Google search engine is the biggest source of website referral traffic on the internet, you’d do well to improve your presence there. The following tools are free:
- Google My Business
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
Google My Business gives you an enhanced search presence when people search for your business’s name. It shows images of your business’s name, address, phone number, images that you upload, reviews, and a written blurb about your business that you provide. Google My Business was originally created for small, brick and mortar businesses, but I recommend that all of my clients use it. It enhances your legitimacy to people that search for you, and it drives extra search traffic to your website.
Google Analytics is more complicated to use, but you could easily hire someone on Fiverr for $20 or less to set it up on your website. If you have a Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress website, then setting it up is really easy. It gives you data on who is visiting your site, how long they are there, and where they came from. With some advanced configuration, you can even track when your website users fill out a form, call you, or make a purchase.
Google Search Console is the tool formerly known as “Webmaster Tools”. It measures organic search traffic from Google, tells you your Google rankings, and reports website errors when they occur.
2. Use SEO Plugins for WordPress
Using great plugins for your WordPress site is one of the easiest SEO hacks that makes search engine optimization a breeze. There are many SEO Plugins you can select for your website, but on the top of the list are the Yoast and Rank Math Plugins. These tools have great functionality, and again, are totally free.
They enable you to complete title tags and meta descriptions, create a sitemap.xml, use schema markup, set other important technical settings.
This is great because you don’t need a developer or to delve into the code to make impactful technical changes. Technical SEO just became a whole lot easier.
3. Consider Advanced Analytics
If the above suggestions are too basic for you, you may want to consider using an advanced analytics tool. Woopra is a great choice with robust functionality. It also has a freemium plan, and offers a lot of tracking capabilities that Google Analytics doesn’t.
One of the main limitations that Google Analytics has is its sampled data. It only reports based on a small fraction of the actual people visiting your website. Woopra gives you access to 100% of your data – so it’s much more accurate. And if privacy is a concern for you, know that Google Analytics is definitely using your data to sell advertising to other people. It has a lot of personal information on you and your customers.
Woopra, on the other hand, keeps everything private. They signed a pledge to always maintain data privacy, so you won’t have to worry about that.
4. Install Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Is site speed a problem for your website? Thanks to the collaboration between Google and other search engines, you can now improve your mobile page speed quite easily. Accelerate mobile pages use stripped-down HTML, designed for rapid pages load speeds. They are a reconfigured mobile version of each one of your existing pages, and they have their own URL. Your normal website users can’t see these pages unless you show them.
If you have AMP on your website, search engines will automatically serve your AMP pages to mobile users. And many websites only share AMP URLs to their social media followers, since most people are on their mobile devices when they’re on social media.
If you’re on WordPress, you can use any one of multiple AMP Plugins to instantly provide a lightning-quick mobile page version of every page on your website. The downside to using AMP is that there is limited functionality. You’ll have to reconfigure it to offer advertising or callouts. That’s why I like using AMP on the blog, but wouldn’t recommend it for other webpages.
Staying up to date with technology can give your business a competitive advantage, and will make your life easier. These simple SEO hacks make SEO accessible to everyone. Now it’s your job to use them.