If your company’s website traffic is down and you aren’t receiving the visibility you want, chances are that it’s time to reevaluate your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) to help boost your traffic.
If you have inadequate SEO, poorly written content or broken links and redirects, these can all contribute to lowering your search engine ratings. There are several different SEO marketing strategies that companies can incorporate into their sites to help gain traction in search results and drive more people to their pages. Let’s dive into how we can fix these issues.
1. SEO Audit
Conducting a thorough SEO audit can help highlight not only website performance but what may be hindering your organic search visibility. Here are the top 10 culprits that may be hurting your site.
1. Google Search Console. If you don’t have this set up, you won’t be able to determine if Google is having difficulty crawling and indexing your site.
2. Toxic Links. While link building is essential, having too many toxic links can create problems. Toxic links are links to spam sites or links to websites that are only for the purpose of link building, and often these sites contain malware or spam.
3. Broken Links And Redirects. If you have several 301 redirects or broken links, search engines will rate your site lower.
4. Performance. Search engines heavily weigh website performance and site speed when rating sites. If your site has outdated plugins or too many plugins that are clashing, it can slow down performance speed.
5. Mobile-Friendly. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly or responsive, it’s time to consider investing in a new website.
6. NAP Profiles. If name, address, phone number (NAP) profiles are not consistent across all Google searches with the information on your site, it can impact your results.
7. Bad Advice. If you received bad advice in the past about SEO and content writing, this can hinder your website now and into the future.
8. AMP Versions. If your site doesn’t have accelerated mobile page (AMP) versions of websites, it can be causing problems. These are different from mobile-friendly versions of pages. AMP is essentially a new project from Twitter and Google designed to make web pages really fast and is a stripped-down or basic form of HTML.
9. Cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization occurs when you split content across two pages that should be on one page. Google looks at two pages with similar content and determines which one it thinks should rank higher. When you spread information across two pages instead of focusing on one high-quality content page, it can be a detriment to your rankings.
10. Images. If the images on your site are too large and not compressed, this affects performance speeds.
2. YouTube Videos
Maybe you’ve heard that making educational YouTube videos and answering your customers’ common FAQs is helpful. But where many companies fail is not linking their YouTube accounts to their website or not linking to their site from the videos on YouTube. If the two aren’t linked, you’re missing out on gaining valuable SEO traction.
YouTube is easily one of the most popular websites, attracting almost two billion users monthly. Anything that links from YouTube is extremely valuable, whether or not these videos have a high number of views. There are two ways to include these links on your site:
1. Link to your company’s website from your YouTube channel account.
2. If you have already posted any YouTube videos on your channel, edit the description to include the relevant pages(s) on your site each video relates to, whether it’s an FAQ page, a blog post or an area of expertise.
3. Content
Using the right keywords is an effective way to get your company’s site to rank high. However, you need to implement a strong content strategy that highlights the following:
• Primary Pages. Primary pages should target primary keywords that contain high-value words that relate directly to your services and areas of expertise. Since I work primarily with law firms, let’s use an example from that industry: A primary keyword example could be “DUI attorney New York.”
• Secondary Pages. These pages should include keywords that relate to your services.
• Tertiary Pages. These types of content pages include long-tail keywords. These types of keywords are three- to four-word phrases, such as “DUI criminal defense attorney New York City” or “DUI traffic stop in New York.”
4. Reviews
Whether you get a positive or negative review online, it’s essential for your business to respond. Clients heavily rely on online reviews when selecting service providers. Promptly responding to reviews is necessary, and since Google weighs reviews, it’s essential to respond to any left on Google. Remember to answer all reviews, though, including those on Yelp, Amazon, Angie’s List or any other place that rates businesses like yours.
5. Emails
Having a strong email campaign helps businesses improve their website traffic. Here are the top email campaigns to consider:
• Lead Magnet. Give away an e-book or a piece of content that is helpful for your clientele.
• New Leads. If you want a new lead to become familiar with your company and your processes, create a video about how to hire a business like yours.
• Capture Reviews. Take advantage of past clients, and as soon as their transaction or interaction with you is settled, email them and ask for a review. Positive reviews can drive even more traffic to your site.
Instituting these five helpful steps can boost your business marketing, increase your site traffic and help you capture more effective leads that turn into clients.