For small companies and entrepreneurs, getting found on search results is not just essential but could make or break a business.

According to the infographic below, optimizing websites for search engines is an essential component of any digital marketing strategy. Solid SEO translates to better quality website traffic, which in turn translates to leads and ultimately sales.

If you plan to adjust your site a bit and wonder which changes are urgent, we got you covered. In this post, we will explain briefly what measures should you take to improve your SEO. These fixes are simple and won’t take you much time.

Let’s get started.

Do Some Housekeeping

First things first; you need to get your house in order before bringing in more people to come by for a visit. A few things to look into right away are the following:

Does your site have an “https://” prefix? Get an SSL certificate if you don’t have one yet.

Have you checked how your site looks on mobile devices? More than half of your incoming traffic is going to come from these devices, so you want to make sure it looks good for those visitors as well.

Does it load fast enough? Visit Google PageSpeed Insights to check what you need to improve in order to make your site load faster.

Getting housekeeping done right will prepare your site for more visitors. When they reach it, they will stick around because they can find the answers they want, the site will work well on their mobiles, and pages will load quickly.

Update Content

Next, you’re going to want to update your existing content. Identify main posts or pages — those you feel that best represent what your site is all about — and beef them up a bit further so the site can be even more helpful and comprehensive.

You can achieve this goal by following the guidelines below:

• Content length should be between 1,800-2,000 words. Today, the average Google’s first page result contains 1,890 words. This indicates that more detailed and more comprehensively written content performs better on search results.

• Titles with 6-13 words attract the highest and most consistent amount of traffic.

• At the start of your article, answer the question right away. By doing this, you will also optimize the site for voice search.

• Break up large blocks of text to make it easier to read. Strategically use subheaders and white space.

• Photos, graphics, video, and other media not only help make your content more appealing but they also keep visitors on your site longer.

• Look into getting more long-tail keywords from tools like UberSuggest, Keywords Everywhere, or AnswerThePublic. Incorporate some of these into new, expanded sections of your post or page.

• Consider merging redundant content into one page and improve it by adding sections for frequently asked questions or going further in-depth with more examples. In fact, go through the archived posts once or twice a year and find articles that need some updating.

Promoting Your Brand, Your Content, And Yourself

Now that your site is fixed and you’ve got more comprehensive content, you’re already in a much better position SEO-wise. To further improve your ranks, you’ll want to do some outreach and let other folks in your industry niche know about you and all the good stuff you have on your site.

Using free tools like Ahrefs and Buzzsumo will help you to find out which sites are likely to give you a link if you pitch them your new content.

Conclusion

Even as Google’s search algorithms go through periodic updates, remember that its end goal is to give users the best possible online experience.

It’s the reason why users keep coming back there to find answers and information, and you would do well to work along this philosophy too.