This article is a follow up to the previous article  I had written regarding the benefits of search engine optimization (SEO) for small businesses. In that article I had started offering some advice and tips on what small businesses could do to improve their websites rankings on search engines such as GOOGLE, BING, YAHOO, etc. In this post, I will provide additional guidance that will help your business improve its SEO Ranking. However, the best advice I can give you regarding improving your search engine ranking is still HIRE ME 😉. But on a serious note, let's get started:

11) You don’t need to submit your website to search engines. They have evolved beyond the point of needing to be directly notified when a new website, or page on a website, is created.

12) Get advice directly from Google. Via their Webmaster Guidelines and Webmaster Help Videos.

13) Don’t risk Google penalties. As they have a significant share of the search market, a penalty from them results in a significant, and often long-term, loss of visitors to your site.

14) Know why your site can be penalised. Common causes are poor quality content, keyword over-optimisation, an advert heavy page layout, and too many low quality backlinks.

15) You’re ultimately responsible for all of SEO work done on your website. Search engines won’t remove a penalty on the basis that you didn’t do, and didn’t know the specifics of, the SEO work on your site.

16) Set-up and use Google Search Console. To find out, among other things, what keywords your site is ranking for and which other sites are linking to yours.

17) Set-up and use Google Analytics. To find out, among other things, how many visitors your site gets, the keywords they use to find it, and what pages they visit.

18) Set-up a Google My Business page for your business. Doing so builds trust with Google and improves rankings for localised keywords.

19) Diversify your traffic sources. Google is a great source of traffic but being 100% reliant on them for visitors puts you in a vulnerable position.

20) Use Pay Per Click in addition to SEO. If you can afford to do both, then do both, as although PPC can be costly, you can get visitors to your site straight away for any keywords that you want.

I hope this article was helpful and that it sheds some light on how you can improve your small business website ranking. I will have part 3 of this article in the upcoming weeks. If you have questions or are ready to have your small business website built and Search Engine Optimized, feel free to book me here: http://www.bafiasoft.com/#booknow/  or call me directly at 240-232-2818 .

You can also view some of the work I have done for past clients here: http://www.bafiasoft.com/portfolio/ . I am looking forward to helping you drive traffic to your website and customers to your business through the newly designed and SEO friendly website I will build for you.