01

MOBILIZE YOUR WEBSITE
Have you ever clicked onto a link from your phone only to find a jumbled page? The search engine dislikes when that happens as much as you do. A 2016 statistic estimated that nearly 60% of Google searches happen on mobile devices. This makes creating a mobile-friendly page imperative if you want to keep your business in the game.

02

CATEGORIZE
In the back office of your website, you will see the option to categorize your content. Do not pass this up or take it lightly. The more relevant categories you choose, the more the algorithm will consider your page for different searches. However, Google will penalize you for choosing irrelevant categories, so don’t try to cheat the system. Do your homework. Look to see what categories your closest competitors use. This way, you know what direction to go in.

03

SIGN UP FOR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Do not pass up the opportunity to create a Google My Business profile. This free tool makes you more searchable, increasing your exposure to potential customers. This tool allows you to create a searchable profile for your business to tell your customers a little bit about what you offer. It also makes interactions easy via any device.

04

RESEARCH KEYWORDS
Choosing the best keywords will make a world of difference to the search engine. Your keywords must relate to your topic. The more closely they do, the better Google will rate your site. You also want to choose keywords and phrases that people actually type into the search bar. This takes research. Think like the customers you are targeting. Use Google’s keyword checker to see how the words you want to use rank.

05

BUILD A BLOG
Building a blog for your site allows you to organically create constant content. The algorithm loves sites with fresh, relevant content. It provides you with a passive advertisement that people will find useful and therefore pay attention to. Blog posts also give your customers something to share on their social media.

06

LINK UP
Create external links on your website or in your blog to non-competitive businesses. Links will both build a friendly rapport with other companies, but it also makes you more important in the search engine’s eyes. You can easily add them in on a blog post when writing something relevant to what they offer. Google also pushes up pages that are linked to by reputable sites. So, find ways to get your business link to another site, because this is how to do local SEO the right way. You can do this by asking them to share news as a trade-off for sharing their news. Or you can hire a company to write a guest blog post for their site, that you pay for, with a link to a page on your website that you want to highlight.