Having a website is a must for small business owners. These days, whenever a current or prospect customer feels like finding out something about your business, e.g. hours of operation, location, etc., they generally just Google your companies name and see what pops up. Other times, people browsing the web have never heard of you but they are just casually looking up a specific topic or service. If your small business offers what they are looking for then you would love for it to be the first thing they see on the results page. It isn’t that easy though. Your business may be located across the street from the person doing the search but if you website is poorly optimized for search engine algorithms then 100s of other results of companies far away might pop up before your business makes it on screen and long after the searcher’s patience has run dry. What can you do to improve where and when your small business’s website pops up in search results? You need to improve its ranking through Search Engine Optimization. The Star continues with the 7 best tips for doing such, “whether a business is in the process of building a website in-house or working with an external developer and wanting to understand or speak their language here are seven tips for businesses to improve their site’s search rankings:

1. Secure Links
2. Update content regularly
3. Variety in content  
4. Ensure the site is “social media optimized”
5. Use keywords in page titles
6. Ensure main navigation links contain
7. Offer unique and valuable content

Click on the link below to see the explanation behind each.