In the ever-evolving tech world, having a presence online is a must. If your North Carolina small business is also struggling with low visibility on the search engines, then keep reading on to discover how you can increase the visibility of your small business on Google amongst the other search engines.
A Quick Look at the Key Ranking Factors
A Secure and Easily Navigable Website
Google highly values HTTPS encryption because it makes visiting websites safer for users. Also, seemingly easy navigation can make your users wander around the site for a longer time and helps to reduce the bounce rate. Since efficient websites are necessary to get noticed, competition relies on various technologies like Joomla and marketing agencies to grow their market.
Mobile-friendliness
The number of mobile device owners is increasing rapidly, and those users are accountable for more than half of the worldwide web traffic. Moreover, Google penalizes websites that are not mobile-friendly, which results in lower search ranking and decreased traffic. A well-designed mobile version of the site can revive the search engine ranking.
Quality of the Content
When it comes to content, quality prevails over quantity. Too much irrelevant information or duplicate content can lower the ranking, and lack of engagement make users abandon the website. Well-written and detailed content can help reach the right audience, engage them, and make them take some action on the site.
Top 7 Ways You Increase Your NC Small Business Visibility on Google
1. Register Your Site to the Google Search Console
Google search console is a free tool that allows website owners to submit their websites for indexing. It helps them to monitor and optimize the website's presence while assisting in maintenance by detecting and resolving issues like server errors, site load delays, and security threats like hackers and malware.
2. Do Keyword Research and Optimize Them in the Content
Perform thorough keyword research. You can use different SEO tools for that. Make a list of popular and relevant keywords, and use those naturally while creating content. You should place keywords in the article's main heading, in some of the paragraph headings, and a couple of times within the text. You can also target long-tail keywords as they are more specific to a particular audience, and you will face less competition as only a few businesses are targeting them.
3. Plan Integration of Links
Internal and external links are the two main link types that boost search rankings. Internal linking means placing the link of one page to another page within the website. It helps to keep users on the website for a prolonged period as they might follow different pages. Also, search engines use these links to navigate your site.
External links connect your pages to other websites. It helps your website to gain popularity as its ranking gets high on Google when reputable sites link to you. There are two ways to get the external linking done. One is to outreach to blog owners/ other sites to feature your content's link on their site. And the other way is to build backlinks to your website by guest blogging on authoritative websites.
4. Submit Your Site to Online Directories
The more places you create your business profile and add your website, the more it helps to amplify your business's online visibility and give you an edge over your competitors. Here are free online directories and social media platforms to list your business.
- Google Business Profile
- Yelp
- Foursquare
- LocalGuides
- Bing
- Super Pages
- YellowBook.com
- Locanto
Make sure you submit only the necessary and trustworthy information and verify everything before it goes online.
5. Register Your Site to the Google Business Profile
As a business owner, this should be one of your top priorities. Note that to register, you need to have the physical address of your business. This submission of NAP(Business Name, Address, and Phone number) along with the other attributes to Google Maps helps the search engine to crawl more efficiently.
6. Write Quality Content
Google bots crawl through the content and rank only those which satisfy the search intent. To provide quality search engine results, Google asserts that the longer someone spends on a website, the better the website must be.
- Among the different types of content that can be effectively used are videos, infographics, case studies, presentations, and press releases.
- Add a blog page that provides precise information to your niche audience so they can find relatable content easily and stay longer.
- While optimizing content, you can also add testimonials from your clients to build visitors' trust.
- A feedback section on your website can work wonders. By doing so, you will be able to determine the user's issues and what needs to be done.
7. Increase Your Site Speed
When the website loads more time, the user might get frustrated and leave the site immediately. Start using Google PageSpeed Insights-a tool to measure and test the speed of your web pages. As a result, you do not get traffic on your site, and its rank goes down. No worries. There are some ways to increase the speed of your site.
- You can use a minimal number of images or compress them so they can have a fast loading time.
- Cache web pages
- Minimize the use of external scripts
- Minimize the number of plugins
Combining all the pieces
Here is a checklist of the factors you need to consider and work on:
- Register your site to Google Search Console
- Keyword Research and Optimization
- Integration of Links
- Online directories submission
- Register your site to Google Business Profile
- High-Quality Content
- Review/Feedback Section
- Page load speed Improvement
Undoubtedly, there are barriers to ranking your website, and improving your online presence is not an overnight process. Keep the strategies up-to-date, and measure the site's traffic and conversions to make strides in this area. Incorporating these tips into your plan for improving visibility can get you a lot of traffic. When you want to make improvements with clients' intent in mind, implementing diverse tactics can work as a wonder.
