6 Tips to Help You Rank in Search Engines + LLMs | Low-Hanging Fruit on the SEO Tree
You know you need to be working on your SEO, but do you know how? SEO stands for search engine optimization. It basically means making your website as crawlable + easy to read as possible for search engines + LLMs so your content can be shown to internet users when they search for your products or services.
Most of our clients rank for name-based keywords, meaning they’re the first site to come up when someone searches for their company name. Which is great, but what if someone doesn’t know about your brand? How can you get *discovered* by new people who don’t know your name?
That’s where SEO comes in. SEO is an on-going, heavily research-based process that evolves over time based on how people search. One year people might be searching “brunch in Ogunquit” while the next they type “restaurants that do breakfast ogt” instead. Your SEO strategy should change + grow over time based on the keywords people are using to describe the services you provide.
Your SEO strategy can be as complex + thorough as you want it to be, but sometimes a deep dive is overwhelming when you only need the basics. Here are 5 SEO tips that will help your site get found with minimal effort + upkeep.
Make sure your address *including* city, state, and zip code are on your website
Why is it important to include your address? Well, beyond being helpful for people visiting your site + interested in stopping by your brick + mortar location (if you have one), search engines use your location to show local results for searches. If the search engine can’t find your location, it won’t show your site in local results, so make it easy for them by adding your full address.
Claim + Populate your Google Business Profile
In addition to listing your address on your site, you should also add it to your Google Business Profile. Claiming your address on Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business, allows you to show up on map searches. If you don’t add your location to your profile, Google won’t include you in the list of “places” in the map section of results. Plus, you won’t show up in the actual map searches under your category (restaurants, coffee, bars, shopping, etc.)
Adding your address + officially claiming it on your Business Profile helps nearby customers find you much faster, even if your services are remote or you have an online storefront.
Sign up for Google Search Console
Google Search Console, formerly known as Webmaster Tools, is a free service that makes sure all your web content is indexed by Google. Most websites give you a sitemap automatically once the site is created (or you can get a plugin for it). Once your site is up + running, submit your sitemap on Google Search Console to make sure all your pages are indexed + ready to show up on SERPs. If you add or update content, just resubmit your sitemap to make sure all the new stuff gets indexed.
Install Google Analytics on your website
Google Analytics is helpful for SEO for a few different reasons. It tracks organic traffic to show you how many visitors arrive from search engines versus other channels, like social media or paid advertisements. It also measures user engagement, highlighting high engagement rates or low interaction times, which tells you if your content satisfies the search queries it’s appearing for so you can adjust keywords and strategy if not.
Google Analytics also identifies top content to show you which pages attract the most visitors, and monitors conversions by connecting organic visits to your business goals like form sign-ups or purchases so you know what’s working + what’s not. Plus, it finds content flaws + points out pages with high drop-off rates that need better information or faster loading times so you know what needs to be improved + how to fix it.
Make sure you’ve got keyword rich content on all your pages
Using the keywords you want to rank for in your content across pages helps search engines identify it as relevant to search queries that include those keywords. Include keywords on every page of your site, but make sure it’s authentic + you’re not using them where they aren’t relevant. SERPs will understand that it’s not authentic + flag it as irrelevant, hurting your SEO efforts.
Add alt text to all your images
Adding alt text to images is more than an accessibility standard – it’s an SEO basic too. By adding alt text, you can use keywords (when they make sense) to bolster your content + provide search engines with a text description of your image so they can index it + see how it relates to your content.
Feeling like you’d rather have someone else take care of your SEO so you can focus on the parts of your business you already know + love? No worries. That’s what we’re here for. Get in touch to chat about your SEO strategy.
