With Google frequently tweaking its ranking algorithm, it’s important to continuously evaluate and improve your own SEO efforts.  To do so, we suggested in part 1 of this series that you invest in mobile optimization, promote your company with press releases to build links, and actively pursue a social media strategy.  Today, we’ll cover the other top SEO strategies that you should adopt in 2015.

• Audit Your Site.

In a relatively short period of time, you can run your website through an SEO audit and see specifically what issues would be useful to fix to improve your search rankings.  There are a number of free SEO audit tools including SEOptimizer, mysiteauditor, and Zadro Web’s SEO Optimizer.

• Improve Your Title Tags.

Title tags—the description of your web page that appears at the top of a browser—are extremely important in SEO.  In fact, Search Engine Land deems it “one of the most influential ranking signals we can control.”  Best practices for title tags include: limiting them to between 55 and 60 characters, keeping keywords at the beginning, and creating unique titles for each page.[1]

• Use Long-Tail Keywords.

Long-tail keywords are more specific phrases that are used by people conducting searches.  For instance, a person searching for a restaurant could enter just a keyword like, “restaurant,” or he could enter something more specific like, “Mexican restaurant with wide tequila selection.”  The latter would be a good example of a long-tail keyword, and statistics show that approximately 70% of page views originate from long-tail keywords.  To come up with long-tail keywords for your business, check out WordStream’s free Keyword Suggestion Tool.

This concludes our search engine optimization tips for 2015.  By implementing them, you’ll increase the likelihood that your business will make it onto that coveted first page of Google search results.

These days, SEO is a buzzword experts toss out again and again with good reason.  No business owner wants his company to show up on page 4 of Google search results--the horrors!  Fortunately, your SEO can be improved and while bettering it isn’t an overnight fix, these time-honored strategies will help to reverse the devastation.

Give Careful Consideration When Selecting Your Keywords

Keywords are a core feature of well-designed SEO.  That said, you’ll want to do your homework when selecting them.  Fortunately, Google Keyword Tool is one great way to get a leg up on your competitors; it allows you to test search phrases and provides alternative keyword searches so you can make comparisons.  With just a little research, you can make a positive impact on your search engine rankings.

Deliver Fresh Content

Google does have a freshness algorithm that takes into account how timely information is on a website.  So, not only do businesses want to provide great, relevant content, but they also want to continually offer new content.  One great way to keep your content fresh is to have a blog or press/newsroom section on your website.  Not only will they improve your SEO, but they also provide incentives for your customers and clients to revisit your site on a regular basis.

Optimize Your Images for SEO

There are three things that you want to take into consideration when it comes to images on your website: the file name of the image, its title tag, and its alt tag.  The file name—if it consists of multiple words—should be separated with hyphens and a descriptive.  The reasoning?  Google interprets dashes as word separators and underscores as word joiners.  For instance, the phrase red-herring would be read as “red herring” by Google whereas the phrase red_herring, would be translated as “redherring.”

The alt tag—which provides a description of the image if the image isn’t available—should include keywords and a relevant description for SEO.  Lastly, don’t forget the title tag which contains the text that users see when they mouse over an image.  As with the alt tag, you want to include your keywords in the title as well.

Finally…

As with anything, seeing improvements in your search engine rankings can take time.  So, commit to a long-term strategy and continually refine your approach as needed.  With consistent dedication, you can expect to see your search engine rankings rise.

If your website isn’t number 1 in Google search results, you probably want to improve your rankings.  A great way to get insight on how to do that is to see what your primary competitors are doing.  For instance, check out the competitors in your location or industry that are ranked the highest and evaluate their websites for some of the following:

1. Helpful Pages – Do your competitors have pages that you don’t offer that your customers might consider useful?  If so, this is a prime opportunity for you to “bulk up” your website by adding more relevant pages.  A higher number of web pages will increase your search engine rankings if they’re relevant and not done merely to trick search engine algorithms.[1]

2. Inbound Links – What websites are linking to your competitors?  As you probably know, quality inbound links increase a website’s search engine rankings.  To find out your competitors’ inbound links, visit Small SEO Tools’ Backlink Checker.  Once you have this information in hand, strive to not only match all of your competitors’ inbound links but also to obtain new ones.

3. Reviews – See what reviews are available online about your competitors.  For example, if you offer a dry cleaning business, go to Google and search for “dry cleaning YourCity, Your State.”  This should show you a list of local dry cleaners, as well as websites with written reviews about those businesses, like Yelp and Google.  Get a sense for how many people reviewed your competitors; reviews increase organic search engine rankings so strive to increase your number of reviews by asking customers to leave positive feedback if they were happy with your service.

4. Content – Google loves fresh content and this is another area where you’ll want to see what your competitors are doing.  Do they have blogs?  How often are they updated?  Do they regularly send out press releases and archive them on their websites?  Get a feel for how often they update their content and strive to do the same or better.

If you’re a small business owner, it’s more important than ever that you have a well-designed website.  To that end, we’ve devised a list of 5 essential things that every website should include:

1. Great, Fresh Content – Remember that content is king.  As such, your content should be interesting and appealing to your target audience.  Additionally, offering fresh content is more likely to attract repeat visitors.  To that end, consider regularly creating blog posts so your customers have new content to return to.

2. Attractive Design – You don’t want your website remembered for its flawed design.  Avoid that scenario by selecting professionally-rendered graphics and using intuitive site navigation.  If your website could stand an upgrade, consider hiring a graphic designer to make the site more appealing.

3. Optimized for Searches – In this day and age, SEO is critical.  You should take advantage of SEO Best Practices by using the page title and description tags in your HTML code.  Consider these meta tags a brief advertisement for your brand.  With that in mind, you’ll want to create tags that are descriptive and that include important keywords.

4. Phone number – Amazingly, over 60% of small businesses don’t display their phone number on the home page of their websites.[1]  After getting potential customers to visit your site, you don’t want to send them on a fishing expedition when they want to get in touch with you.  Clearly display your phone number on all of your web pages so visitors don’t have to waste time searching.

5. Testimonials – Testimonials can be very impactful—consider how much business Yelp has driven to retailers since its inception.  Placing quotes on your website from satisfied customers can be a persuasive sales tactic.  John Zhuang, of web design and SEO firm Winning Interactive, says that testimonials “…help your potential customers to build trust in you, especially if you are new.  [And they] help shoppers to confirm whether the product [or] services meet their needs.”[2]

If you’re looking to increase your page ranking in Google search results, perhaps it’s time you consider long tail keywords.  While marketers will commonly use “head” keywords—popular but general search terms— long tail keywords are less common but still very useful.  A long tail keyword is a more specific search string.  For example, a head keyword is “vitamins.”  A long tail keyword might be “vitamins that reduce high blood pressure.”  While fewer users will search on the long tail keywords that you select, your competitors are less likely to use them.  As such, your site will appear higher organically in search rankings when someone searches for your long tail keyword.  Furthermore, long tail keywords are associated with higher conversion rates.[1]

But how do you know which long tail keywords to use? Fortunately, there are a number of different options you can explore:

1. Professional Tools

Several websites—both free and paid—provide related long-tail keywords for various search terms.  To get started, you could try Ubersuggest, Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool, or WordStream’s Keyword Suggestion Tool.

2. Google Suggest

When you type keywords into Google’s search engine, Google will display a drop box of suggestions that other users have typed in that are related to your search.  Also, at the bottom of the first page of your search results, it will display related keywords—many of them long tail—that are similar to your search.  With these results in mind, you can begin researching these long tail keywords to see whether they are good prospects for your SEO efforts.

3. View Related Comment Threads

Visit blogs or authoritative sites where people are asking questions or posting comments about the types of goods and services that you provide.  Oftentimes, you can find great ideas for long tail keywords in the comment threads.

Once you have your long tail keywords—and have researched their viability—you can design your content around these words by adding a related blog post, creating a new sales page, or modifying your existing content to include your new keywords.  You’ll find that just a few new long tail keyword-optimized pages may have a substantial impact on the number of new visitors you get to your site.