Last week I blogged in length about why SEO is important to small businesses, and some things you can do to improve your search engine ranking! Today I'm getting really practical and showing you one way to do just that - and it only takes a few minutes! So let's jump right in.
One of the first things you need to know about search engine optimization is where you stand related to others in your industry. Most of us know how to Google our own business name, but this will not give you accurate results! The goal of a search engine is, of course, to give the most relevant and accurate results to each individual performing the search. This means that Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines actually pull from your recent history to determine what websites to display when you search a key word or phrase.
For example, I love reading the Oh She Glows blog for gluten free food inspiration. If I am subsequently searching for a recipe that appears on this blog, a search engine will view my history and automatically rank that recipe higher than all the others. For someone who is more of a Brown Eyed Baker type reader, the results would look completely different.
This means that if you search keywords in your industry, your website will most likely appear higher on the list to you than to anyone else searching. And you want to get a realistic picture of where you are! Enter incognito/private windows.
Incognito, or private windows, allow you to surf the internet without saving any of your history. This means for our purposes that you can accurately gauge your search engine ranking. To open a new private window, click the menu bar in the top right (for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox) or click File (for Safari). Select 'Open new Private/Incognito/Secret window.' A new window will appear, and you can now use this to search away and find out where you really rank.
This is just one step in the process, but if you don't know where you are, you won't even know how to begin! Stay tuned for more tips and tricks when it comes to small business SEO. If you want to know more, be sure to sign up for my newsletter and email me to book a one-on-one coaching session to get started!
