10 Ways to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings

This post is for the DIY Small Business Marketing Workshop Series. The topic today is 10 easy and accessible ways to help improve your search engine rankings.  By easy and accessible, I mean 10 things the average business owner can do to their website without being a web design or marketing expert.

1. Fix Broken Links Inside Your Website: Google prefers sites where everything works. Broken links will lower your rankings, and fixing broken links helps rankings. Definitely check your website and make sure that all the links inside it work.  The Online Broken Link Checker is a quick and easy way to do this.  A more powerful tool is Screaming Frog link checker.
2. Put Your Contact Info on Every Page:  By contact info, I specifically mean the business name, address and phone number (NAP).  Also, include things like email and fax.  This specifically helps you in “local search” which is when people search for “Glenwood Springs” and the Google Maps (aka Google Places or Google Places for Business) shows up in the results.
3. Get Good High Quality Links: Links from Local expert sites are quite valuable.  Specifically, look at our local chamber of commerce, local BBB, local paper and other local portal sites.  Look for links from related businesses and related local businesses too.  These links help!
4. Webpage Titles: Make sure that every page on your website has a unique and useful title. It should 50-55 pages and have your most important keywords in it. Avoid duplicates!
5. Webpage Meta Descriptions:  Make sure that every page has a great sounding description of about 150 characters. It should sound compelling and make a searcher want to click.  Avoid duplicates!
6. Claim your Google Places (Google My Business’ Google+ Places Account) Account:  Not only claim it, fill it out!  This gets a lot of views and is a super easy way to get more from Google. It is shocking how many businesses do not do this!
7. Get 5 or More Reviews on Google Places: This really helps you get better search results and rankings in Google. When web searchers see those stars, they are more likely to click!
8. Install Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools: While this won’t in and of itself help you rank higher, it will give you the data and intelligence you need to improve your rankings. Our final two suggestions use Google Webmaster Tools.
9. Monitor your Rankings for Your Top Keywords:  Under the >Search Traffic>Search Queries menu item, you can see what keyword phrases you rank for and where you rank (in Google)
10. Submit Sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools: under the >Crawl>Sitemaps menu item, submit your website’s sitemaps to help Google find all your pages.