Solve Below-Par SEO In 3 Simple Steps

Photo by Sarah Blocksidge

A business website needs to be visible in search engines, especially for your most relevant keywords and phrases. The majority of leads and future customers will still encounter companies via Google searches – yes, that’s true even with the rise of AI search platforms. Below-par SEO will mean your web pages struggle to gain visibility in a saturated market, relegating your business to the dregs of your sector. Competitors lap up the leads while you sit there hoping for some scraps. 

It’s not good enough, so here are three simple steps that should solve below-par SEO for good: 

1. Get An Expert Opinion

SEO may falter because you’re so ingrained within a particular mindset that you can’t see why it’s not working. It’s like you’re banging a brick wall in the hope that it will magically open up for you. This happens more frequently than you think; business owners and internal marketing teams don’t understand why the usual SEO techniques aren’t working, especially if they worked in the past. 

It’s time for a second opinion, ideally from someone with no connection to your company. Look for an expert SEO consultant like Jason McDonald, who will give you an impartial assessment of your SEO strategy. Experts like this are worth their weight in gold because they’re completely detached from your business and can be more subjective. They’ll discover things that your team never noticed as they were blinded by what worked in the past. 

This is the first step in rewriting a poor SEO strategy – you identify what’s actually working, and what needs to be scrapped. 

2. Take Action

Based on what the expert says, you should have a list of things to improve upon. Your next step involves taking action and following their advice. More than likely, this will revolve around setting up and fixing the fundamentals of SEO to get your website into a good place. 

Key things to look at include: 

• Fixing slow page load speeds
• Making your site more mobile-friendly
• Indexing all the pages correctly so search engines can find them
• Adding better structure to your content with headings
• Removing keyword stuffing and focusing on better target keywords
• Getting rid of duplicate content
• Adding a better internal linking structure to your site
• Building backlinks through blogger outreach to boost your website’s authority

All of these things will create a positive impact in a short space of time. They take a below-par website and turn it into a much more SEO-friendly one – but the job isn’t over.

3. Test & Update

With all of the fundamentals in place, your final step is to test how they work and keep an eye on long-term goals. Change small elements or tweak keywords here and there to see how this changes your search engine performance. Run A/B testing to look at two versions of the same page and pick the one that generates the best results. 

All the while, you need to update your site with new content to keep it relevant. You’re in a constant state of making updates, testing them, and seeing what works. 

It’s very possible to improve your small business marketing strategy by tackling below-par SEO – and some changes will have an immediate impact. However, if you want things to continue in a positive vein, then you must commit to updates and testing so your SEO doesn’t dip again.