4 Simple SEO Tips to Get More Business

Christine Darby, founder of Collaborada, shares some easy tactics to improve visibility and conversions.

It is very common for small agencies to struggle with the marketing of their own companies. With limited time and budget, it's difficult to dedicate resources to growing your own client list and reputation in the industry, even if that's exactly what you do for other people.

Christine Darby, founder of Collaborada, has made a career of helping small businesses overcome these limitations through the power of three important letters: SEO.

Although his work ranges from small to drastic website overhauls and consulting for his clients, his years in the industry have helped him realize that search optimization can be simple and that sometimes small changes They can give great results.

Most marketers know what search engine optimization is, but it's easy to overcomplicate the topic. In the end, it's all about demonstrating experience so the right people discover you and hire you.

“My goal is to help small businesses,” says Christine. "Many of the people I help don't have big budgets. But a couple of tweaks to their website are enough to take them to the next level."

Christine shares her top 4 tips to quickly increase discovery and conversions for your or your client's business.

1. Use plain language

Keywords are a big topic in SEO, but Christine says it may be better to explain things in the clearest terms possible than to inject industry jargon.

"Sometimes people use high-tech terms," ​​he tells us. "Then I wonder how it would be said simply. And when they explain it to me, it becomes clear to me. This is where we start to find keywords."

Before you start typing or editing any of the words used on a website (including the engine), try typing:

• What does your business do?
• Why people should hire you

Use the language that ideal customers would use when trying to solve a key problem. And keep things simple. This will help you narrow in on the words people use when searching. In turn, the text will be clearer and the site will have meaningful keywords.

2. Write descriptive title tags

Title tags are descriptive text that should tell people what to expect on a page. They are an important part of SEO and help with ranking. Whether visitors see it on your search engine results page (SERP) or by hovering over a tab before entering it, this text should tell them what's on the page.

"Site visitors should be able to clearly discern what you do and who you are," says Christine.

For this reason, the same guidance for clear and personalized language applies here.

She advised K40 Electronics on their need to use clearer, more descriptive title labels, and they saw a quick impact .

“We dramatically changed our search engine visibility,” says Rachel Clark, vice president of sales and marketing at K40. "We now enjoy first-page search results for a wide variety of searches related to our products."

3. Put the right things on your home page

Christine has observed that many businesses use their website homepage simply as an aesthetic display.

"A lot of people go for the design, but you want the website to work for you. Typically it's going to be your most visited page and the one with the most backlinks. So, if people land on that page, you should give them something to do," he says.

Apart from providing basic descriptive information about your business, the home page should give people adequate opportunities to explore your website.

In SEO terms, this is done through hyperlinked words called anchor text. This text should display keywords that indicate what the person will see if they click the link and should be more descriptive than a simple "Click here."

A call to action, or CTA, is the term for anchor text on a hyperlinked button that a person clicks to take an action such as "Learn more," "Subscribe now," or "Contact we".

Christine suggests thinking carefully about why people come to your website and providing that path directly on the home page. She has seen this change work well.

Corlears School, a private infant and elementary school in New York, wanted to increase the number of enrollments it receives each year. So, on the school's website, Christine added a call to action that provided prospective and current parents with a clear path to how to register.

These changes led to a 30% increase in registrations. Now, the school updates its calls to action based on its seasonal goals.

4. Focus on users, not search engines

Even if your goal is to optimize for search, the goal is to make your website useful and easy to use for real people. By prioritizing clear language, smart navigation, and valuable content, you get results.

Christine's clients have found this to be true. “Before Cooperada, our website traffic was limited to existing customers, but now organic traffic and inquiries are through the roof,” says Jason R. Self, COO at Dimensional Engineering. "After launching the new site, qualified leads who contacted us through our website resulted in approximately $250,000 in new opportunities."