Last year gave every business a run for their money, and in a year where the entire world is bouncing back from COVID-19, it is important to make sure you find a winning marketing strategy before your competitors get an edge.
If there’s something everybody can agree on when it comes to 2020, it’s that the world made sure to put everything online. It is safe to assume that if you haven’t turned your attention to your online presence by now, you are falling behind where you could be.
As 2021 ramps up, here are seven essential tips to build a digital foundation on which to grow from.
Make Sure Google knows you exist
Something that is frequently overlooked by many business owners is the simple, yet powerful task of submitting an XML sitemap to Google. While Google (and other search engines) is able to find your website without your help, submitting a sitemap takes minimal effort and helps search engines efficiently crawl your important site files and content.
Think of it as if you were emphasising the important parts of your CV to a potential employer. Basically, think of it as your cover letter to accompany your CV. Although they may get around to reading your entire CV, showing them which parts to pay special attention to helps them get a view of who you are, what is important to you, and ‘rank’ you accordingly.
Submitting an XML sitemap can be done through Google Search Console (GSC). Yahoo and Bing both provide their own tools for sitemap submission as well. Before submitting, make sure the areas of your site that you want available in search results are included, and that areas you do not want crawled are marked as noindex.
Site is responsive on all screen sizes
Starting in September of last year, Google switched to mobile-first indexing for all websites. This means that when it comes to search rankings, Google only crawls and assesses the mobile version of your site.
Now is the perfect time to ensure that your website is mobile responsive. This means that not only does your website work on a mobile phone, but that the entire mobile phone experience is set up to uniquely cater to mobile users. The menu should be easy to find and use, and users should not have to zoom in and out to navigate/read your content, among other mobile best practices.
Although it is not used for ranking your site, in order to provide a high-quality user experience, it is important to optimise your website for other screen sizes as well. Make sure your site is usable on various sizes of tablets and small laptops.
Content is the king of your website
“Content is King” is a time-tested and reliable rule of thumb to live by when it comes to optimising your website for search engine ranking algorithms.
Think about it: without content, there is nothing to tell Google who you are or what you do.
At the same time, it is important that the content on your site has a good balance of quality and quantity. The days of ‘keyword stuffing’ to gain positions on search engine results pages are long gone. Instead, it is key to focus on content that accurately describes your business and what you have expertise in. Combining honest depictions of your business with strategic keyword research (more on that below) should naturally demonstrate who you are and help search engines to rank you for relevant search queries.
Opt for effective on-page SEO
There are almost too many SEO best practices to count or list out, but at the minimum, it is important to know who your target users are, what they are searching for, and what the intent behind their search is. If someone intends to use your services, visit your location, schedule an appointment, or simply learn more about you, which keywords will they type into a search bar to connect with you? Answering this question is a crucial starting point to effective SEO.
After answering this question and conducting sufficient keyword research, make sure each page and post that is indexing on your site has an intentional page title and meta description containing relevant keywords. Optimizing your meta data, along with incorporating your keywords naturally into your site content, will give you a good starting foundation of SEO to build from.
Frequently remind Google of your relevance with fresh content
Simply publishing content to your site and keeping it there is not a sustainable way to improve your search engine rankings. Google gives more weight to and rewards sites that frequently publish new content that demonstrates expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EAT). Many businesses seek to accomplish this by creating original content in the form of blog posts or industry articles that help search engines to pinpoint your expertise and who you are as a company.
Focus on and prioritize important goals
It’s hard to effectively grow a business when you’re trying to do too many things at once. As you set out to begin improving your website and digital marketing strategy for the year, be sure you have defined your goals.
These larger business goals should be reflected in your website, digital marketing, and SEO strategy. Give more attention to those areas of your online presence; you may consider adding more high-quality content to particular service pages that you want to get more traffic, or perhaps you will decide to create a social media campaign to highlight a particular service.
If you’re looking for support with your website and marketing strategy, get in touch, we are here to support you with all things marketing!
