As an entrepreneur you wear many hats until your business is off the ground and running. You’re going to learn so many things you never needed to know and maybe didn’t want to know. Being an entrepreneur is kind of like being a jack of all trades. One of those trades that is usually put on the backburner is search engine optimization (SEO). It’s the one task people tend to get to after they’ve nailed down their accounting, website, marketing, and lead generation tasks, and that’s okay…as long as it’s on the list as a priority. We’re going to take a look at SEO basics you can apply without having to be an expert.
What is SEO?
SEO allows your website and content on your website to have the best chance at success. By optimizing your website and content with keywords your brand is more likely to show up near the top of web searches. Many brands have SEO experts who solely focus on SEO, but as a busy entrepreneur you can implement the basics and still see success.
How to Get Started
- Register Your Company on Google Search Console – Simply register your website with Google and get access to Google Search Console. It includes web stats, google ads and Google Business Profile. Although you may not use every feature, being registered with Google increases your business’ rankings.
- Create an XML Sitemap and Submit it to Google – It’s not as hard as it sounds! Once registered with Google Search Console it gives you various steps to complete – one being the XML sitemap. This indexes your webpages which helps get you ranked on Google.
- Use Google Analytics – To help improve your website and content use Google Analytics to determine the best ranking keywords. Don’t keyword stuff but use these spaciously, and cautiously, throughout your website and when you’re creating content.
- Website Speed – If your website is bogged down with large images and videos it could affect your site speed which has a direct impact on SEO. The slower your website, the more search engines such as Google penalize you.
- Optimize for Mobile – How often do you look at websites on your phone versus your computer? Mobile viewing has overtaken desktop viewing by a landslide so its important to keep your website optimized for mobile. Google preferences websites that are mobile-first.
Now that you’ve done the five more technical steps of SEO you can move on to the content side of SEO. This involves finding and utilizing keywords to help you rank better. There are many tools you can use to do this. Once you find them, create content using them, but again, not keyword stuffing. Create blog posts, videos, podcasts and other marketing content. It makes for good website content but it’s also good content to use on social media and in your email marketing.
Once you complete your SEO basics you should do a quarterly and annual audit to see what worked and how you can improve. As your business grows you can consider hiring an SEO specialist to take your SEO a step further and focus on it full time.
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