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With recent changes to privacy and app tracking with ios14, SEO has become an even more important marketing channel. The number of savvy customers turning to search is increasing. Users know that ads are going in for the hard sell and like to do their own research before making a purchasing decision. That means turning to the search engine results page (SERPs) to get the info they need. If your brand isn’t at the top, you’re going to be losing out.
SEO is a long game and takes time to make strides, especially if you’re fighting for top spots against the big boys like Amazon. But take heart: there are steps even the newest, smallest brands can take to position themselves for success.
Product Reviews
“Reviews are a big part of how customers view your product. Customers want to make sure what they’re buying is the right thing. Nobody wants to waste their money on a product they don’t want or have to deal with returns. Including product reviews on your site is a great way to show new customers what existing customers have known all along, that your product is great. These are usually easy to add to the site.” – Derin Oyekan, Co-Founder of Reel Paper
Faster Sites
“Nobody likes to wait. If your website is bloated and slow to load users are going to bounce. That’s not good for rankings or for sales. With most users visiting your site from their phones, site speed is imperative. Compressing images or unused javascript is going to drop loading times and make for a better user experience. Ultimately this will lead to better rankings and more sales.” – Mike Clare, CEO of Mood Health
Keyword Research
“Writing content is easy, well almost easy. But is it the right content? Is it content that resonates with your users? If you invest either your time or money, or both in content you want to make sure that users are going to read it. It’s also going to drive new traffic to your site. Spend time with keyword research tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush and others to see what people are actually searching for. Look for high intent keywords that are going to drive sales. But don’t be afraid of long tail keywords that may have low search volume. These might end up driving a lot of qualified users to the site. ” – Alex Czarnecki, Founder and CEO of Cottage
Link Building
“Google’s algorithm relies heavily on backlinks, other sites linking to yours. Think of these as votes, though not all votes are equal. A link from a high authority site in your vertical is more valuable than a link from your cousin’s site about his car. Reach out to sites and let them know why they should be linking to you. You’ll get some no’s but also some yeses. Give them a target to link to, usually a great blog or something similar.” – Rym Selmi, Founder of MiiRO
Internal Linking
“Having users on your site is great, but not if they can’t find what they’re looking for. A good internal linking strategy is going to help search bots understand your site, it’s also going to help users navigate your site and get to where they want to be. This could be showing related topics or products or other interesting content you have. This is going to help users become familiar with your brand, as well as show Google what your site is about. If you have pages with no links to them, Google isn’t going to find them and index them. That could mean you created content that nobody will see. So, add those links.” – Eric Gist, CEO of Awesome OS
User Experience
“If your site is a mess people are going to look elsewhere. With tools like Hotjar and others you can see how users engage with your site. That means you can see where they click and how users navigate around. You can test different layouts with these tools to see what works best. Also, keep in mind how your website looks on different types of screens. Just because the checkout button looks great on desktop doesn’t mean it also does on your phone. ” – Craig Carter, President and CEO of Jack Mason
Title Tags
“Title tags are the text at the top of the tab on the browser window, these are what Google and other search engines see when they crawl your site. Include keywords in these and make them descriptive. This is your first impression, so make it count. If your product contains marine collagen, that should be included in the title tag otherwise Google might not connect the dots. However, there’s a caveat, these can only be a certain length or they’ll be cut off.” – Sheila Chaiban, CEO of One Ocean Beauty
Alt Text
“If your site has a lot of images on it, or even just a few, updating alt text is a quick win. This lets Google know what the photo is about, it’s a great way to add some additional keywords to the images. If you have a picture of a product, the alt text should definitely be the name of the product or some other descriptive phrase that will let crawlers understand the context of the image. This alt text also has the advantage of making your site accessible to those with vision problems. Win win.” – David Wolfe, Founder and CEO of Oliver’s Apparel
Technical Issues
“There are lots of things that can go wrong with a website, especially during a relaunch or site migration. Crawl your site with a tool like Screaming Frog to make sure all your urls can be found, the urls are readable and not strings of gibberish. If you’ve moved any content make sure those redirects are in place and working. And, if you find any 404 errors go ahead and fix those. Nothing can hurt your SEO like having crawlers and users hit a dead end.” – Brittany Dolin, Co-Founder of Pocketbook Agency
HTTPS
“HTTPS, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, is the secure version of HTTP, the main protocol used to exchange data between a user’s browser and a store’s server. HTTPS fosters a safe environment for financial transactions, communication, and data submissions.” – Ivan Kreimer, Content Marketer Consultant of Getsitecontrol
Breadcrumbs
“Breadcrumbs are a navigational tool. They allow website visitors to retrace previous steps and return to where they started. Breadcrumbs are not just a usability technique but also provide additional SEO benefits.” – Neal Patel, Co-Founder of NP Digital
SEO is a great way to get users familiar with your brand. With some time spent you can get your site ready to show up #1 on the SERPs and get those customers on your site. If you do your research and position yourself well you’ll be ranking in no time.
