How to Rank Your Website

Use Your Site to Reach New Customers and Convert More Leads

It Spreads Business Branding Awareness and Promotes Professionalism

Without a website, potential customers won’t even know about the business. A website ensures companies can communicate with their clients effectively and spread their branding to access varied target markets.

Businesses risk missing countless opportunities since they don’t have a professional means of showing their reliability, sharing customer reviews, and documenting their services.

93% of Purchase Decisions Begin With a Google Search

Potential customers find their suppliers online these days through search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, or Google.

Since 93% of people looking for their next purchase go online, a business with no website is catering to a mere 7% of the total market. This dramatically reduces the size of the company and limits leads.

Insider Secret: Higher-priced items means consumers will conduct more research before parting with their cash. Businesses with websites tap into this simply by existing in the digital space.

Customers Can Easily Access The Business and Understand The Branding

Websites ensure current and potential customers can find the business efficiently, read up about the values and missions of said business, and answer any of their questions before contacting anybody directly. These days, people want to understand everything before speaking to an employee or manager.

Granted, companies can automatically appear in search results if they are listed on Google Maps, for example. However, it’s not a good idea to leave this up to chance. Strategizing and guaranteeing success with an SEO plan is the key to success here — and businesses like BRANDefenders can help do just that.

It Is a Low-Cost Marketing Method

When looking at cost per impression, websites are one of the cheapest ways to market businesses. Even if a company were to spend $10,000 on website design, the cost for impressions would eventually be as low as $1.98 each (which, compared to the market average, is great!).

Tip #1: Relevant Content Only

Any content posted by businesses on their website should look directly to their intended users. This is bound to increase site traffic and improve the website’s relevancy and authority.

Great content cannot be substituted. It’s the only way to ensure both potential customers and search engine bots can read and rank the websites.

Keyword phrases should be repeated a few times throughout the page content to influence search engines in a preferred manner. Heading tags, bold, and italic formatting is also an excellent idea for ensuring important statements and words aren’t missed.

Tip#2: Regular Updates Are Key

As previously mentioned, bots used by Google, Bing, and similar engines regard content incredibly highly. Regular uploads of new and improved articles are necessary to ensure the website’s relevance remains high.

Businesses should maintain a steady content auditing process to determine whether their pages are performing as planned. Ideally, they should be bringing in a consistent stream of returning and new customers. If they aren’t, it’s time for a change.

Tip #3: Create SEO-Friendly Targeted Links

Links added to phrases like “click here” have zero search engine value. Attaching links to keywords or sentences such as “what is biomedical engineering?” or “northern lights,” however, does present a lot of search engine value.

Additionally, descriptive links will ensure that the site’s readers gain even more insight into the topics they’re interested in. They also help those with disabilities or who use audio screen readers.

Tip #4: Don’t Skip the Metadata

At the back end of web design (where the code is), there are spaces to insert metadata. In other words, information about the contents displayed on the various pages of a website.

While the initial designer will have populated the metadata sections for companies originally, they need to be updated as the site changes over time.

There are three types of metadata businesses should focus on, including the following:

• Description Metadata — This is a text-based description displayed under a business website in search results. It should be short and simple, yet appealing and clickable. The best meta descriptions contain two complete sentences.
• Title Metadata — This is the most important metadata on a website’s page. It ensures titles are displayed properly at the very top of the browser. Creating meta titles is often automated by professional web developers and marketing strategists like BRANDefenders.
• Keyword Metadata — While this isn’t used to compile search engine rankings, it should still be added to a website. Aiming for 3 to 7 phrases is ideal here.

Tip #5: Optimize All Images

Search engine bots use images to decide how well all the content on a page works together. However, these bots (sometimes referred to as crawlers) can’t read an image. Instead, the file name needs to contain the target keyword, so the bots can accurately rank the website.

The Alt text relating to all images also needs to be optimized by including the target or secondary keyword phrase.

Image optimization naturally raises a website’s ranking and also promotes the site on Google image searches.

Tip #6: Understand Keywords Properly

Keywords have been mentioned a lot here because they are vital to any websites’ rank. However, the only way to truly harness their power is to understand the ins and outs of each keyword type.

The types of keywords are as follows:

• Short-Tail Keywords — Sometimes known as generic keywords, these are broad search terms that have a high traffic level. They are incredibly competitive and difficult to rank for. An example is “sushi” or “lawnmowers.”
• Long-Tail Keywords — These are highly targeted to a topic or market. They have a lower search volume and are easier to rank for. Because of this, they have the highest conversion rates.
• Customer-Defining Keywords — These keywords identify a subgroup of an audience or customer base. The customer will use these words to define themselves. For example, “formal shoes for men.”
• Product Keywords — These directly refer to the company’s services or products. Business branding strategies should come with a keyword plan for each service or product they offer.
• Geo-Targeted Keywords — These words identify a location. For example, “Orlando coffee shops.”

Tip #7: Responsive Sites Are Highly Regarded

Slow websites don’t just cause a bad user experience, but they also negatively impact your search engine rankings. Quickly, this will decrease ad revenue, customer conversions, and page views.

Things that can be done by businesses to ensure a fast site include:

• Remove plugin clutter
• Always review plugins
• Upgrade the hosting plan
• Understand HTTP requests
• Use Gimp to optimize images