Launching a website comes with many responsibilities; having a website won’t make a bit of a difference if you don’t know how to properly manage it.
Below is a list of some of the common mistakes local business owners make while managing their sites:
- Take a step back from branding. Many business owners focus too much effort on advertising the name of their business; in most cases, you’re the only one with that business name, so it is unnecessary to focus too much on the name of your business. Focus on beating out your competitors for key products and services!
- Diversify your keywords. This is just a fancy way of saying to NOT just solely focus on the main products/services you provide. Yes, of course it is important to optimize and focus your efforts on your core products/services, but since your competitors sell and offer the same things as you, it is important to differentiate yourself. It’s always smart to stay one step ahead of your competitors.
- Be sure your website is user friendly! Don’t just assume the people who land on your site already know what they are looking for; make sure your site is loaded with content that an “average Joe” can understand, and a site that is easy to navigate and use.
- Don’t forget to concentrate on local areas first! Many businesses decide to go for the big homerun at the very start of their SEO campaign; while it’s good to be optimistic, from a business standpoint, it would be smarter to focus on the local area first, and once you rank well in areas around your business, you can move beyond the local boundaries!
- Don’t forget about local listing sites! The first thing you should do is claim your Google+Local page and Bing Local page! This will help your business come up in searches coming from and around your city/town. Also, don’t forget about Yellow Pages, Super Pages and Yelp. Listing sites are very important, as they help expand the channels for which potential clients can find your business, its site and its information.
- Optimize your homepage. Your homepage is the most important page of your site, make sure it’s well optimized…what does this mean? You have the phone number, address and email address of your business in clear site; most sites have this information right in the front right of the header, where clients can easily find your contact information. Having the phone number and address on your homepage will help with conversions. You should also have a nice contact form, where clients can fill out their contact information and what they need from you from a business perspective.
- Beef up the pages of your site. Make sure the pages of your site are filled with rich content about your business and the service/product you survive. Be sure to elaborate on each page; don’t just say we do x y and z, please give us a call at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Content helps you get found, don’t skimp out on this part of the SEO process! Write content for your clients; you want to make sure they understand what you do!
- Don’t spam cities or keywords. Many local businesses just have a list of they cities they serve or the services/products they provide; this list does you no good, SEO wise. You won’t rank well if you just have a list of cities and products/services. You need to take the time to write out content for each city and each keyword you want to focus on, if you want great search results.
- Using too many characters in your Page Titles and Meta Descriptions. Many businesses use way too many characters and words when writing up the page title and meta descriptions of each page on the site. For page titles, Google only reads 60 characters, and for meta descriptions, they only read 160 characters, so it is pointless to write these tags with more than the allowed characters. Often times Google will rewrite page titles and meta descriptions for those that are not well written or if they are over the allowed character limit.
- Be sure to update your business information if it ever changes. If you change the location or your phone number or email address, be sure to change it throughout your website; also don’t forget about the listing sites you placed your business on! You will have to update the information on all listing sites your business is apart of.
Follow these steps, and your business’s site will be in good hands! Of course as a business owner you don’t nearly have enough time to stay on top of your site; that’s where Boston Web Marketing comes to play! For more information about our SEO services, please give Boston Web Marketing a call at 857.526.0096.