Do you run a small business?
Do you have a website?
Do you know if it delivers results?
On the assumption your are running a small or home business, I suspect that you probably will be able to answer “yes” to the first 2 questions. However, if you can not answer “yes” to the 3rd question, you need to stop and ask yourself, am I making the most from my website?
Unfortunately many small businesses think that just having a website is enough. Just by publishing one, that it will automatically be on the first page of Google results and that you are getting lots of business. Alas this is not true.
Now you may have got someone to design the website for you. Therefore, you may think that as they are the experts, they will ensure that the web site is designed to deliver results. Alas again not always true.
So what can you do?
Step 1
Make sure that the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) know about your website. Your website will not be returned in the search results if it is not in the index.
Pro tip: You can check very simply if your website is in the index by typing the exact URL into the search box i.e. for Digital Ark type www.digitalark.co.uk.
Hopefully your website is in the index. If not then you will never show up in the search results until your website is.
Step 2
Assuming you are in the index, you should track performance. A good way to do this is by setting up Google Analytics for your website. This is a very good tool provided by Google that allows you to track visitors, pages visitied, average time on page / site, entry page, exit page, search phrase and much more.
Just using the basic metrics of unique visitors each day / month will allow you to track if the number of visitors are increasing. Knowing the popular pages allows you to fine tune the content to increase conversions.
Step 3
Having your web site in the search index and monitoring visits does not mean you are maximising the potential of your website. Websites that achieve the best traffic are the ones that appear on the 1st page of Google. Unfortunately, this usually takes more than a website in the index.
While there are many factors, backlinks are very important. Websites with many relevant backlinks tend to perform better than those with less. Therefore, strategies that attract natural backlinks are very important.
Summary
The whole topic of SEO for small business websites is vast and these are only 3 of many. If you would like a free, no obligation review of your site, please visit small business website performance review, complete the simple form and we will provide you with your free report.
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