Mastering SEO is like finding a diamond in the rough for businesses looking to make a mark. Here are the ten top-notch SEO practices to give your New York business a leg up on the competition.
Target the Right Keywords
The keywords are the make-or-break factor in the SEO game. There are multiple ways to research the right keywords for your New York business. You can find the keywords from the search suggestions in search engines. There can be questions that your customers often ask. Also, you can find topics related to your business that are currently trending on Google Trends. You can also use tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, Moz, etc., to find the right keywords faster.
Prioritize Local SEO
First, make your GMB profile. Try to include your target keywords to make your customers easier to find your business with the right keywords. The business hours and the photos also add up to the convenience of the customers. All your information must be correct and uniform across your website and social media.
The customers are attracted to businesses with positive reviews. So, the more authentic positive reviews you have, the easier you can gain new customers and rank well in search engines. You can also submit your site to online business directories for better visibility.
Monitor Website Speed
Analyze the speed of your site on Google PageSpeed Insights. You will find the lighthouse-generated score indicating your site speed. Go through the detailed report with suggestions for a better speed.
We recommend compressing your site’s HTML, CSS, JS, and images. Also, you can use WebP image format and lazy load the images and scripts. More than 88% of the customers on your business website come from mobile. So, your site speed must also be optimized for mobile.
Optimize Images
It is a good practice to name your image file appropriately for improved site speed. Using an appropriate keyword to name the file is better if it can be used naturally. You should separate the words with hyphens instead of underscores for better SEO.
Make the file’s name descriptive so that it makes sense for users and search engines. It’s always advisable to use alt tags for the images. Alt tags serve as the context of the images for helping visually impaired users.
If the images don’t load by any chance, the alt text acts as the placeholder. You can write the alt text more descriptively than the file’s name. You can keep its length to about 125 characters.
Create a Sitemap
A sitemap helps the search engine know all your site’s pages. Various sitemap types exist, such as XML, RSS, and Text. You must follow a valid sitemap structure. Also, it is a good practice to break down a large sitemap into multiple sitemaps to make it faster for search engines to process them.
After you prepare the sitemap, submit it to the search console so that the search engines can find the newly updated and published pages faster. Creating a sitemap is worth the effort as it makes it much easier for search engines to crawl all the available pages on your site and index them faster.
Implement Schema Markup
With the correct implementation of schema markup, your content is shown differently in search engines. It helps improve the CTR and also makes the search engine understand your page better.
We recommend you use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to implement it in your New York business. You can choose the sitemap you want to implement based on the page type. After selecting the elements from your page, create HTML and paste it to your site. Finally, remember to test the schema to know if it’s valid.
Optimize URLs
The URLs should briefly describe the content. So, using appropriate phrases instead of random numbers or dates in the URLs is a good practice. Try to keep the URLs short so that it’s easier for users to type. Too many words in the URLs can be viewed as keyword stuffing by the search engines. It is recommended to use hyphens instead of underscores in the URLs. You should also avoid using capital letters in the URLs of your New York business website.
Improve User Experience
User experience describes the ease of the visitors while navigating your site. Here are some tips for improving the user experience.
- Add a hyperlink to your logo to link to the homepage.
- Improve the loading speed of your site.
- Optimize the site for all devices.
- Provide top-notch customer service.
- Get feedback from the visitors.
Improving user experience results in better conversion rates and retention for your New York business. It encourages the users to visit your site again and again.
Focus on Internal Linking
Internal links are the links that redirect the visitor to another page on the same site. Internal linking makes it easier to navigate across the site. These links make a hierarchy of pages on your site. Also, they pass the link value across multiple pages. You can add contextual links to your content. The search engines can also identify that there are many related pages on your New York business site. You can also add a section for related posts at the bottom of the page.
Avoid Orphan Pages
Orphan pages are the pages on your website that are not linked to from any page. These pages can only be accessed if the visitor has the direct link. There can be orphan pages after site migration, redesign, change in navigation, etc. You can fix these pages by adding internal links and noindex tags and merging or deleting them. There can also be various discontinued products in your New York business. You can prepare a list of those products and remove them from the site.
You will be well on your way to hitting the nail on the head by implementing these strategies. Also, Skyfield Digital stands ready to help your business climb the search ladder. Contact us today, and let’s turn your SEO goals into reality.
