The race for top search placements is more competitive than ever. As always, the best SEO service providers are looking for an edge to help business clients maximize visibility. But before implementing complex SEO strategies, make sure your digital marketing agency is taking advantage of these website SEO optimization strategies that are right under your nose.
Top Search Engine Optimization Strategies for Business Websites
A simple website audit almost always reveals low-hanging fruit that delivers quick search placement wins at the top of search results. Consider the following website optimization techniques, and see how much of a difference they can make.
1. Include Visible Calls to Action
Verify that every service page has a clear call to action featuring a phone number, link to a quote form, or downloadable content. Ultimately, the goal of a business is to capture the attention of a potential customer and move them to the next stage in the sales funnel. Ideally, the website will have a form directly on each service page (reducing the number of clicks the user must take).
2. Create a Comprehensive Location Page
Location pages are helpful for both consumers and search engines, so it’s important to get them right. Ensure that you create a well-written location page for each location. These must outline the main services the business provides and include its location. Verify that this data matches up with the Google Business Profile (GBP). Finally, use a listing management service to distribute business data to directories and search engines.
3. Fix Broken Links
Broken links lead to a poor user experience and can reduce the chances of achieving top search placements. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to audit the website for 404 errors and clean them up.
This is a great time to audit and ensure that external links are opening in a new window – and that internal links do not. Also resolve other issues that may exist, like linking to HTTP rather than HTTPS (internally and/or externally).
4. Monitor Google Search Console
Google Search Console provides a wealth of information to help with website optimization. This tool will identify indexing issues, mobile compatibility errors, security problems and related concerns.
You’ll want to look here for 404 errors, pages that are crawled, but not indexed and pages that are discovered, but not indexed. Ensure there are no FAQ schema errors, that the sitemap is being crawled, etc.
If you haven’t checked Google Search Console in a while, you’ll more than likely have some potential issues that need to be resolved.
At Rocks Digital, we look at Google Search Console monthly for most clients, and quarterly for those on a lower-level ongoing SEO agreement.
5. Enhance Older Blog Posts
Mature businesses usually have blogs dating back years. However, many of the older blog posts will not be optimized to their potential. Check Google Analytics for posts that are receiving traffic but not converting. From adding missing CTAs to refreshing outdated content, fixing clear issues can improve the experience for current visitors, and enhance search placement for even more traffic.
If you have blog posts that are getting traffic yet are not relevant to the business, you’ll need to find a way to benefit from that traffic, or consider removing it and redirecting it elsewhere. Irrelevant website content can have a negative impact as well.
6. Improve Website Load Time
Slow loading times can negatively impact the user experience and harm search rankings. Google’s PageSpeed Insights and other tools can identify issues that need an immediate resolution. Common examples of required changes include optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, improving server response time and so on.
7. Improve Website Click-Through Rate
Achieving top search placement is only half the battle – you’ll also need to convince searchers to click through to the business’ website. We previously covered five SEO strategies to give your website a bump in search. Some of these opportunities (like optimizing page titles and meta descriptions) will make a difference in the click-through rate. In addition, you should also optimize for featured snippets by creating brief answers to common questions within your content.
8. Consider a Responsive Website Design/Website Revamp
Business websites need to offer a quality user experience across all devices. While mobile-friendly design is far more common as mobile browsing has increased, some older sites might find they don’t display well on every platform. With the majority of website rankings in search results for desktop and mobile being decided based on the mobile view of their website, poor mobile responsive design is something you cannot ignore.
9. Earn Backlinks With High-Quality Content
By creating engaging, high-quality content, websites can earn backlinks from locally relevant platforms or authority sites in the industry. An infographic is an excellent example of content that’s easy to share, and that can produce links from respected websites.
10. Optimize for Voice Search
With the growing use of voice search, it’s important to present content in a conversational manner. This approach increases the likelihood of content being used in response to voice search requests. In addition, optimize for long-tail keywords that align with conversational search terms. These keywords work well for voice searches, and also lead to additional search traffic.
11. Bolster Website Security
For a local business, ensuring website security is essential for maintaining trust, protecting customer data and avoiding potential losses due to cyber threats. When search engines identify security concerns, securing top search placements is unlikely. Steps you can take include using multi-factor authentication, a quality hosting provider and HTTPS security.
12. Maintain a Google Business Profile
For a local business, an optimized website and GBP go hand-in-hand. With the help of a Google Business Profile creation and optimization service, you can improve placement in the local pack for relevant industry keywords.
Try Our Industry-Leading Website SEO Optimization Services
Rocks Digital provides comprehensive SEO, content marketing and web development services for local businesses. If you need help improving rankings in the top of search results for relevant keywords, speak with our team today. Call (214) 989-7549 or request a website evaluation.
