Tackling your business website’s SEO (search engine optimization) can be an intimidating task. Getting your business on the first page of Google may seem like quite a feat, but it’s doable! Let’s start with three very simple ways to win favor among search engines. They are fairly small problems, that if resolved, can make a big impact on your small business website rankings.
Related eBook: SEO Pocket Guide
SEO DIY #1: Create a 301 Redirect
Many small business owners have their website address set up under two URLs. For example: https://thrivehive.com and https://thrivehive.com. Search engines like Google might consider these to be two different sites which has a negative impact on your website rankings.
So how do you solve this issue? You use what’s called a “301 redirect”. This is a way to tell Google that the website they’re looking for at https://thrivehive.com has permanently moved to https://thrivehive.com Google understands this and assigns all of the SEO relevance of the first to the consolidated URL (counting all the incoming links under one single site).
To put a 301 redirect in place you need to be able to access your website host. The exact technical implementation varies, but it is something that your website developer can implement quite easily. If you are “the website developer”, you can read more about 301 redirects and how to implement them on Google’s site here.
If you want to check the status of your website with respect to redirects, you can go here:
http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/
SEO DIY#2: Create Readable URLs
Which URL is easier to understand?
- https://thrivehive.com/blog/522228034_d7206372b0_z.html
or - https://thrivehive.com/blog/three-simple-seo-wins
An easy to understand URL has a significant impact on whether a user visits that page. When the URL provides a good sense of what is on the web page, a user interested in it will be more likely to click it, generating more relevant traffic to that page. Readable URLs are also trusted more by users. URL with a long, indecipherable string of numbers and letters is likely to turn a user away in fear that it is in some way an unsafe or counterfeit page. Since a readable URL also makes it easier for people to find what they’re looking for on your site, Google has taken notice and rewards websites that use readable web page names.
To solve this potential issue simply use full words when naming your web pages. If you have a small website, this is easy to do manually when you set up the pages. If you have a site that is a little larger, you’ll probably want to use a Content Management System such as WordPress that uses readable web page names automatically.
SEO DIY #3: Use Alt Tags for Images
The third SEO tactic you can easily implement on your website is to use alt tags and descriptive titles for your images. Images are a great way to enhance the messaging on your web pages and increase the appeal of your site. However, search engines like Google aren’t able to read pictures when crawling. Alt text stands for the text alternative of an image, which allows search engines to “read” an image.
Assign alt text to an image that includes the keywords for which its page is trying to rank. This can help with your page ranking and also help your images to rank in image searches. You create alt tags in your website’s HTML code, but many platforms make it easy to edit the alt tags of your images.
If, for example, was writing a blog post about low-cost marketing strategies, here’s how it would look in WordPress:
When you upload an image into WordPress, the title is automatically generated by its file name on your computer. Since I saved the image as “10 Low-Cost Marketing Strategies”, this is the title that was created. The URL WordPress generated for that image also contains that name. This is why it’s important to include keywords even when saving the image.
The alt text field is empty, but since your title is already made for you, you can easily copy the title name and paste it into the alt text field.
SEO can be complicated and overwhelming, but every little step you take counts! Start with these three steps today and you’ll be on the path to winning favor among website visitors and search engines alike.
7 Comments
Thanks for these tips. I am immediately going to make sure these are covered for my website and blog.
Hi Steven, I’m happy to hear you found the tips useful!
Tips are very useful. Thanks for sharing this.