It’s a new year, and it’s time to update your search engine optimization strategy! Start with the basics.
If you haven’t done it in a while, go through checking and updating the keywords that make up the foundation of your efforts. Make sure all your pages use excellent titles.
If your business focuses on local clients, you can then start focusing on local Melbourne, FL SEO.
Whether you’re designing your website from the ground-up for search engine optimization or if you just want to make a few tweaks to gain that extra few percent on your bottom line, keywords are key for everyone. A small change of phrase may get you more customers and far less competition. If you advertise online, using bad keywords will actually cost you money.
How do you find good keywords? Start out figuring out your goals for each area. What are you trying to do? What counts as success in that area? How are you going to use each keyword? What’s the penalty to your bottom line in each area if the keywords are off?
Use an online keyword tool to see the overall keyword “landscape.” From the words people use when searching, you can get an idea of their intent. If your business allows it, focus on keywords that suggest someone wants to buy or complete their goal… those clicks will be the ones that make you the most money. Don’t worry too much about competition when picking your main keywords. That’s something to think about when optimizing the “secondary” keywords.
Once you’ve got some great keywords, sit down and optimize your <title> tags. The <title> is the single most important SEO field on your web page! Make sure you have only one <title> tag per page, and that it’s in the <head> tag on each page. Every page on your website should have a different title. Remember the keywords you found?
Place your top keywords first, with the rest in descending order. Just keep in mind it’s not a place to dump your keywords. Write each page title with natural-sounding language. Branding should come last unless you’re trying to optimize for your brand… but you’re probably not Amazon or Microsoft, so more generic keywords will probably be more worthwhile. Lastly, keep the title short, under 70 characters, as longer ones tend to get cut off anyway.
For businesses with primarily local clients, local SEO is becoming extremely important. Tight Line Productions recognizes that more people than ever are using search engines to find businesses in their area.
Successful SEO means getting listed in as many different directories that you can find, and having pages on all the social networks. You want to be on Yelp, Superpages, Cityscape, and all the rest. Try looking for your competitors — anywhere they are, you should be listed too. Searching for their business name and phone number (minus area code) can be very helpful.
Since this is local SEO, also go for local sources. Local bloggers that cover your market segment may have pages that list businesses they like. If you can get cited here, that’s extremely helpful. National blogs in your market may have local counterparts or vendor databases where you can put your contact information. If you’re a wedding business, you should be in The Knot’s database.
Don’t forget the local newspapers and directories either. If you host events, you should definitely be submitting them to local newspaper calendar listings.
Yes, all this can be a fair bit of work. The business results, though, speak for themselves. With a little patience, you’ll be glad you put in the effort.
