While someone may have a gourmet kitchen with fancy equipment, that doesn’t make them a professional chef. The same can be said for business tools. Having premium tools means nothing if you aren’t using them effectively. This is often the case with how small companies choose to use their Social Media... an indispensable marketing tool that happens to touch on most aspects of our daily lives

It’s easy for things to fall through the cracks when running your company and managing your employees are your main priorities. Day-to-day activities can easily sidetrack your goals of growing your business and owning your local market. It’s for these reasons that many small businesses don’t pay much attention to where they exist online. Your company’s Google ranking is not something that should fall off your radar.

There’s something to be said about the fact that “Google” is most people’s go-to word to describe searching for something online. “Google It” has become the new way to suggest looking something up. According to search experts, 88% of consumers who search for local businesses online either call or visit the business within 24 hours. It begs the question: If customers search for your services online, will they be able to find your business?

The journey to the number one ranking on Google differs across cities, towns and industries. But generally speaking, it’s safe to say that proper keyword placement, quick page load speed and quality content are the best bets for SEO growth. These strategies make it easy for Google to match searchers with results that are most relevant to them.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are a few strategies you need to avoid if your goal is to improve your ranking.

When building your Website, it’s important to accurately represent your company’s identity. Your Website is your #1 Marketing resource, after all. While branding and credibility are important, don’t forget the primary goal of your Website: to turn people searching for a service into customers. User experience is the key to a successful Website, which is why it needs to be revisited on a consistent basis.

Even though most companies like yours do the majority of their business over the phone or in person rather than online, having a Website is an essential step to getting in front of potential customers in your service area. Nowadays, your Website is your most valuable marketing tool.

Companies that don’t have a Website lack credibility and miss out on the growing number of customers that do online research before hiring a provider. In one report, researchers found that 63% of consumers primarily use a business’s Website to find and engage with a local service. In other words, businesses without a Website are missing out.

The success of SEO efforts relies on the ability to pick and choose strategies that keep you above the competition in your area and industry. Knowing how to track and analyze the results of your campaigns is just the first step in improving your results. Here are just a few key metrics to pay attention to when looking at your SEO campaigns.

Research shows that posts with links get more traffic than posts with just text.  Do you ever find an interesting article that you end up emailing to all of your friends? Or maybe write articles of your own and post them to your blog? If this is the case, you should be posting these articles on all of your social sites as well.

This guest blog was provided by Julia Clem, a member of the marketing team at Best Pick Reports.

Your end goal when structuring your Website should be to optimize user experience. Your site needs to be structured in a way that guides users through certain steps you want them to take. Whether it’s filling out a consultation form, learning more about your product or service, or signing up for a newsletter, you want them to be able to do so as easily as possible.