Baton Rouge Search Engine Optimization Experts: Why is SEO Critical for Local Businesses?

For local business owners, word of mouth and phone books have long been replaced by laptops, tablets, and the phone in the palm of your potential customer’s hand. This transition has been accelerated and substantiated by search engines, namely Google. So how can you make sure that you are found by those who need you when they need you? SEO, or search engine optimization for long. These three little letters can make the difference in you being buried in the world wide web or rising to become the front and center solution that your customers and clients are literally searching for.

Leverage the On-page SEO Opportunities of Your Business’ Website

On-page SEO is critical for communicating to search engines what you are trying to share on each page. First, and foremost, page titles send signals to search engines that let them know that you have something valuable for their searchers.

Home, About Us, and Contact are important pages on any website. However, these are not page titles; these are signals to Google that you sell “home”, service “about”, and enjoy the 1997 Jodie Foster movie “Contact” with Matthew McConaughey. If any of these single words occupy this valuable SEO real estate it’s not “alright, alright, alright”.

Utilize the back end of each page to be as relevant as possible to represent your product or service. Page titles are typically comprised of two long-tail keywords, separated by a pipe, or ‘|’. These strategically placed keywords are used by a search engine’s algorithm to make sure it is providing the most accurate and authoritative information for its searchers (i.e. your potential customers).

The other critical elements of on-page SEO include headers and backlinks. Headers come in many shapes and sizes (H1, H2, H3, etc.) and provide additional information for search algorithms to understand what each page has to offer. They also break up a webpage in easy to discover and digest areas of information. Backlinks, whether internal or external, offer an even deeper context and correlation into the quality of your content. 

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is a critical need for any and every business in today’s digital world. Having an online presence is no longer an option, it’s a necessity; it only works if the great things that you have to offer can be found by the people that need and want them. While you are busy making and doing these awesome things it can be difficult to focus on SEO; this is where an experienced digital marketing firm can pay digital dividends. For over a decade BlinkJar Media has been helping businesses and organizations of all sizes establish themselves and grow organically through search engine optimization and inbound marketing.