Increase organic site visits

According to Google, more than half of people are now browsing the internet using their mobile devices. People are spending more and more time on their tablets and smartphones. This means how people access their information is changing and how search engines are ranking sites is also changing. A mobile friendly site is critical for any small business who wants to increase their online presence. Recent changes to google’s algorithm have increased the ranking penalty for site’s that are not mobile friendly. Having said that, “content is still king” on the internet which means ensuring each page and post on your site is well written, engaging and optimizes the use ofrelevant keywords and phrases will go a long way to increasing organic search site visits.

In addition to Google, the Bing Network is a good opportunity for many business owners to reach their target audience. This is particularly true when the target demographic is older, less technically inclined and more likely to use a desktop.

Getting to the good stuff

This post will examine the numbers supporting the increasingly mobile trend, as well as introduce some basic SEO concepts that small business owners should use while writing their content to increase organic site visits.

Background Research

• Google owns about 65% of the market share of US searches;
• Bing owns about 14%, but is now the same company as Yahoo which owns 16%, so collectively they make up about 30%of searches in the US;
• About 14% of searches in Canada are done on Bing;
• About 80% of searches in Canada are done on Google.

Arborg.com states that the Bing Network represents 30% of desktop traffic in North America, is mainly used by Americans over the age of 35 and has less competition among advertisers.

Working with Bing will allow businesses to stand out from their competition more easily than on Google. And by focussing efforts on both Google and Bing business owners will cover roughly 95% of all searches conducted by both Desktop and Mobile devices in Canada.

Global Mobile Market Share

How to increase your organic site visits using both Google and Bing?

There are many factors that influence your site’s ability to improve your site’s search engine rank and ultimately your Organic site visits, but for today we are going to focus on the two which will have the most impact and are the easiest to fix. Page titles and title tags, as well as meta name = “description” tags are the two easiest page attributes to fix. Both tags can be found in the page header and are easily changed in most page editors. In WordPress, you can use a plugin like Yoast or others which will allow you manage the title and descriptions for each and every page on your site.

Page titles and Title tags

According to Webceo.com,

“Title Tags are the most important location to place your page’s chosen keywords. These are the keywords that literally tell the search engines what your page is about. For users, the title tag is the text that shows up in a browser window header when users open your page and the Title is used in the line that serves as the main descriptor which is bolded as a link on the search results pages. They can also see this text in their Bookmarks/Favorites menu after they save your page to bookmarks.”

It is suggested that title tags should be between 40 and 55 characters in length and use as many relevant high volume content keywords as possible to generate help impressions.

Page descriptions and <Meta name=”description”> tags

Page descriptions and Meta description tags are an important part of the SEO mix. Although not directly related to establishing a sites Organic Search Engine ranking, the <meta name = “description”> tag is used by Google, Facebook and other search engines to deliver your page’s description in their search results. As such, using accurate, well-written < meta name =”description”> tags that are between 80 & 155 characters do have a significant impact on a site’s CTR.

When the meta name “description” tags are left blank, search engines will automatically generate one using your site’s content. The challenge with using automatically generated descriptions is that they aren’t optimized for a higher CTR. Ideally each page should have its own custom description that correlates to the page title, considers the page content, provides useful information for the user and has a call to action so that the user is encouraged to learn more and visit the site.

What are my next steps?

This post has identified using both Google and Bing to increase your site’s visibility. It has also explained two important first steps in increasing your page rank. Obviously SEO is very competitive and your competitors will be constantly taking steps to improve their sites Search engine rank too! In future posts, we will explore some of the other tips and tricks to help keep your edge.