Small Business SEO
Business Self-SEO Areas Often Overlooked
If you are doing your own small business SEO or you just want to keep an eye on that SEO consultant. There are a few areas you will need to keep an eye on.
Focus is very important in SEO. Keywords should be used specifically and chosen for different areas of your site. When optimising pages, you need the keyword in the page title, The H1 tag and once every 100 words or so. The keyword has to appear natural in the text. Don’t squeeze in to many keywords per page. Keywords need to be strictly on topic so you will to rank well for those terms.
As load speed has become a ranking factor you need to check the size of any images on your site. So ‘minimise the size.’ People simply upload their images, as they are, then resize in the code on the page. It would take a lot less time and use up a lot less space on their server if they shrink their pictures before uploading them. Any good photo-editing program has a resize function. You rarely need pictures that are bigger than 10cm square, so plan your picture sizing before uploading.
Another speed and server space saver is the resolution of pictures. The industry standard for print is 300dpi, meaning 300 dots per inch when printed. But when viewed on a computer screen, pictures don’t need to be anything more than 200dpi. The ability to change the resolution should be somewhere near the resize function in your photo-editing program. This will also reduce the file size which improves load time and server space.
When reviewing your site, think simplicity. Keep it simple where possible. Keep each page down to a minimum for swift loading times. Your site’s viewers will appreciate it, and your content will get to them before the 8 seconds is up. That’s how long you have to get their interest before they are gone.
If you have a new page that you wish you first be crawled then ranked by the search engines then you need to give it some support with your internal linking. Link a new page from your top three or four pages, including your home page. This will boost the authority of the new page through the influence of your main pages, which you have ranking well from your excellent SEO skills.
Don’t get too attached. When you first optimise your site or revise your optimisation strategy, you need to be ruthless. Clean up your site by removing pages that don’t serve your subject, and update the content of those that are a little aged.
When you remove pages, don’t forget to implement a 301 redirect to a similar page. Redirecting to your main page can cause you problems with the search engines, as it isn’t similar to the page you deleted.
Any changes you make to your site will take time to have an effect. Give each of your changes a couple of weeks at a minimum to show results. The hardest part of SEO is knowing when to stop tinkering and wait.
