The modern world runs on the internet, and businesses that failed to adapt to these modern times have gone under long ago. If you want your business to succeed, it’s not enough to have an online presence, you need to have great SEO as well.
Results on the second page of Google receive 0.78% of all clicks, so if you want your small business to be noticed, you need to get on the first page of Google results. It’s not going to be an easy thing to accomplish, but it’s certainly not impossible. These tips will help you get there, so keep reading.
Don’t neglect local SEO
As a small business, you’re probably just starting off and looking for customers in your area. If you want to attract customers from California, you need to implement local SEO tactics.
As you’re probably aware, Google has a “near me” function that presents people who do a local search with results of businesses that are in their area. Since 46% of all Google searches include local intent, you would be smart to pay attention to local SEO.
If you do, not only will you increase the number of visitors to your physical store, but you will also boost your website’s traffic. This can increase your online sales and boost your SEO, as Google will see your website as valuable.
The first step in performing local SEO is to create a Google My Business profile. This will help boost your visibility across Google, and your potential customers will see your business as legitimate. On this profile, you can use the Q&A section, reply to reviews, and share important company news.
If you want to increase your chances of being recommended to people in your area, you can hire a local agency that specializes in local SEO.
For example, if you’re located in Orange County, you can look for the services of an OC search engine optimization agency. Find a company that has an intimate understanding of the SEO market in Orange County and can help you get a high-ranking position on Google.
Use dedicated servers
An IP address is a unique set of four numbers used to identify devices and serves over a local or internet network. These numbers all have a dot in-between them and range from 0 to 255. When devices communicate with one another, they use these IP addresses.
If more than one device is communicating to a server, they’re using a shared IP address. However, if you want your organization to have an IP address that belongs just to you, you need a dedicated IP address which you will get if you use dedicated servers.
With a dedicated IP address, your website will load much faster than one that uses a shared IP address, and your users will arrive at your landing page much faster. Google uses loading speed as one of its ranking factors, so this can be of great help.
When you’re choosing the server that will host your private IP address, you need to pay close attention to its location because this is another factor that will affect your website’s speed. And since your company is located in the USA, you need to use a dedicated server USA hosting solution.
A private IP address also reduces the risk of IP blacklisting, provides your workers with secure remote access, and allows you to form your online business identity.
Conduct SEO audits regularly
SEO audits are generally simple to conduct, but a lot of small businesses overlook this step in their search engine optimization strategy.
This audit can help you see your website’s ranking and identify all of the things on your site that may be causing issues. This can include small problems such as broken links, meta descriptions that don’t include keywords, and poorly written page titles.
You can look for SEO audit tools online, and they will do a good job. However, most of these tools, while powerful, can also be pretty expensive for small businesses with a tight budget. If that’s the case for you, you should use a free SEO checker to improve your site’s SEO score.
Improve your website’s loading speed
As we already mentioned, the loading speed of your website has a big impact on your SEO ranking. And while having a private IP address is one of the ways you can improve loading speed, there are a few more things you can ensure great speed.
Here are a few things you can do to ensure your customers don’t wait too long to land on your website:
- De-install all plugins and apps you don’t need.
- Make sure your site performs well on all kinds of browsers and devices.
- Get rid of heavy images because they can slow down the loading speed.
- Don’t use any complicated themes or too many effects.
- Keep your widgets at a minimum.
- If you have to place ads on your website, make them as few as possible.
Conclusion
Building a small business from the ground up is no easy task, but doing it in a big and influential place like California can give you an advantage. As long as you have an internet presence and work hard on your SEO, you can keep a high-ranking position on Google, and success will come soon.