As a small business owner, SEO may not be a term that you are completely familiar with. You may have heard it mentioned by your web developer or read about it in conversations about marketing. But what is it and how can you get better at it?

In the most basic terms, SEO is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine.

There are people who make their entire living helping businesses with their SEO. But there are several things that you can do yourself to help increase your ranking.

• Create good content. One of the most important things that search engines look for is the quality of the content on a website. This starts with knowing what your audience really wants (not what YOU want to tell them!).  Content that appears to be spam or only existing to to sell products does not sit well with search engines. Your content needs to more relevant to your audience than your competitors in order to rank higher in search results.
• Update the content often. Stale information is not quality information.  According to research, websites that created 16 or more blog posts per month saw more than 3.5 times more traffic than those that only posted 0 – 4 times. Have a strong content marketing strategy can help you plan your content around upcoming events, holidays and other dates that are important to your business.
• Make sure your site is mobile friendly. In 2016, people worldwide started using mobile devices to access websites more than they used desktop devices.  When your audience does visit your website on their mobile device, if they cannot find what they are looking for or the navigation is not clear they will quickly leave and find a site that better suits their needs. This is why Google ranks mobile-friendly websites higher than those that are not. Google even has a tool that allows you to test your website to see how it will perform across devices.

There are a lot of other things that can affect your search ranking, but these few actions will put you on the right path. If you need help, consult an expert. SEO can be complicated depending on the size of your business and the industry that you participate in. There are over 1 billion websites and search engines try to surface the sites that will be the most useful for people. Make your site one of them!