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Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complex discipline, but you don’t have to be an SEO guru to improve your website’s visibility in search engine results.

With a little effort, and adherence to a few best practices, you can help make sure that your website will be found by people looking for the products and services you offer.

Here are some simple ways you can help your website rank better in online searches.

Include variations of appropriate keywords and phrases relevant to your page’s focus.

To help search engines figure out the context and intent of a webpage, make sure to include relevant keywords and phrases. Consider what words and phrases your potential customers might use when looking for products or services like yours. You can find many resources online that explain how to do keyword research effectively. How? Search for the phrase, “how to do keyword research effectively?”

Format content to provide a logical hierarchy of the information on the page.

Use headers (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6) to structure to your writing. Headers break content down into a main topic, sub-topics, and sub-sub topics. For example, let’s say you run a wholesale greenhouse and are writing content about annual plants.

Here’s how you might structure your headers to make it clear what the main topic and varying levels of sub-topics are:

H1 (Main topic) – Wholesale Annuals H2 (Sub-topic) – Geraniums

H3 (Sub-sub topic) – Regal Geraniums H3 (Sub-sub topic) – Ivy Geraniums

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H3 (Sub-sub topic) – Common Garden Geraniums H2 (Sub-topic) – Petunias

H3 (Sub-sub topic) – Grandiflora Petunias H3 (Sub-sub topic) – Multi-flora Petunias H3 (Sub-sub topic) – Supertunia Petunias

And so on.

Keep spacing concise between the elements of a list.

Whether you include a numbered list or one with bullet points, don’t add extra spacing before or after the elements within your list. Search engines might find it hard to tell that everything belongs to one list, and if they have a hard time understanding the structure of your content, it might reduce your SEO.

Link to relevant internal website pages and reputable external sites.

Within your content, provide links to other pages in your website. Make sure these links have a purpose and that you’re not simply adding them for the sake of having them there. The goal is to make navigating your website easier, so you’re providing a good user experience and keeping people on your website longer.

Where it makes sense to do so, in blog posts for example, also consider including links to other websites. External links to trustworthy websites that offer reader’s helpful

information and that are relevant to your webpage’s content can improve the credibility of your website and improve search results.

Find resources to help you with online marketing and more.

As you work hard to make your your business visible online, visit the kitsapscore.org website to find a volunteer business mentor near you. SCORE volunteers have experience in and knowledge all aspects of starting and running a business. Fill out a mentoring request and meet with someone in Kitsap County who would like to help you.

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If you need experience or skill levels that we don’t have locally, we will help you find the right volunteers who are willing and able to mentor by email, telephone or live, online connections.

Ken Sethney is a volunteer business mentor and branch manager for SCORE Kitsap. He started his first business in 1976, and several more after that. Contact him by email at [email protected].

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