Virtually everyone in the western world has adopted some kind of technology in their day to day lives, the business field has had to adapt and most businesses have embraced the idea of having a website to help them reach out to as many customers as possible. A business owner should make sure that the site remains relevant and brings in the business that they intended it to bring in when they had it built.
Search Engine Optimisation
Business owners should consider SEO when they create their website. SEO will determine how your site ranks in search engines, the better the rankings, the better the chance of reaching your target market, getting enquiries and sales.
Small businesses often don’t have enough resources to hire an SEO consultant to work on their site full-time, there are a few things that such business owners should learn to do. Even if a small business owner has the finances there are still key strategies that should be implemented to make sure that the site remains well optimised. The entrepreneur will find tactics that can bring success and make a difference to their SEO strategy. The entrepreneur should not expect instant SEO success, they should make sure that they stay focused on what will work for them in the long-term.
Not Falling For The Flavour Of The Month
Just like most other things that are out there in the digital world, there will always be a flavour of the month – something that is trending at the moment. There are some tactics that can be used to make a site rank higher on the search engines quickly, but, one thing that should be kept in mind is that SEO is not about one tactic.
Once the search engines change their algorithm, a site that has been using just one tactic will be in trouble even if the tactic was considered white hat. A variety of strategies should be used to ensure that the site maintains success in the search results. Any plan should include quality content, sharing insights, quality backlinks, as well as the use of keywords in meta titles, etc. and the keywords, should be used appropriately.
Correcting Stale Content
If there is one thing that will keep potential customers from a website it is poor navigation and missing pages, it will frustrate visitors if they click on links and end up with 404 errors or blank pages. This usually happens when the webmaster decides to change URLs or permalinks for reasons best known to them.
Links should be checked constantly to make sure that they don’t lead to dead pages and if they do they should be redirected as soon as possible.
Consolidate Duplicate Content
Duplicate content can really be a stumbling block for any site that is looking to achieve organic search traffic, any duplicate or similar pages should be consolidated into one or one of the duplicate pages should utilise the no index meta tag, you can learn more about no indexing a page here.
301 Redirects and Canonical URLs
Defining a canonical URL as the same content on a site is accessed through different URLs. When one is to define a canonical URL one indicates their preferred URL to the search engines.
Using 301 redirects, this is used to change the URL of missing pages, ensuring that visitors are always redirected to the right place.
Conclusion
With the business world ever changing because of technological advancements SEO is one of the most important aspects of any business because they need to have a website, telephone directories aren’t published anymore and most people look online when they are looking for a local service.
This post was written and supplied on behalf of freelance SEO consultant, Paul Gordon, https://www.720digital.co.uk/.
