Optimising your content for search engines

In this day and age it is almost essential for any kind of business to own and operate some form of website. Everyone from your local pub to the national banks is likely to have a web presence, and though the latter will be very well known, with the funds to push their site so that it can be found by customers and potential customers, the pub or restaurant down the road will almost certainly not be so lucky.

For this reason, it is vital that small businesses know what functions their website can actually perform, rather than simply having a website online just because everyone does. Most companies; even the very small, run by someone not particularly technology savvy; understand the use of a website as a portal of information. One particular problem many small and local businesses who use a site like this regularly encounter is remembering to update the site with new content every once in a while. Updating regularly is a ranking factor in itself, in that your site is pushed up the search engine rankings if you are seen to be posting new content, which therefore can be relevant to the search terms a user types in. As a general rule, sites that have new content posted on a regular basis are more highly regarded by the major search engines.

This is all well and good for those businesses which want to keep their customers updated with news and events, but what about those which exist purely to give their potential customers a source of information, like opening times or contact numbers for example? For these sites it is vital that the pages containing the information you want to convey to visitors are visible in search engine results. For small businesses it is probably adequate that your home page is easy to find, in which case it should contain a small amount of text, as well as pictures and contact information.

The text on your pages is a small ranking factor, and you do not want to be penalised by the search engines for not including any. You should try to fit in a few keywords that you want to rank for in the natural results; for example, if you run a pub in London, there are worse things you can do than mention that fact in your text a few times – you might say Pub in London and London Pub for instance. This is an quick, easy and uncomplicated step towards making your site easier to find.

By writing some content for your website that includes some keywords you want people to find you for, you can make gains in search engines without talking to SEO agencies; however, if you are based in a competitive market; in London for example; you should talk to a digital marketing agency London based if you want to rise above the competition.

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