How to Improve SEO For Your Business

I was talking with one of our SEO clients recently and he said to me, “Roman, I’ve got so many calls coming in for our business; I’m missing half of them!”

Later that week, a different client called me and said, “Roman, we’re kicking a**! We did $700,000 in revenue last month.”  

Highlights of my week! 😄 These kinds of results are what we’re aiming for at Summit: A total influx of leads and sales for our clients.   

If you want to improve your company’s SEO - and can’t afford to hire an SEO agency right now - here are two areas you should be focusing on:      

1. On-page SEO: Optimize new and existing content around non-brand keywords.
2. Off-page SEO: Work to build links to your website from other websites.

Let’s dive deeper into both of these SEO categories below:

1. ON-PAGE SEO: Optimize new and existing content around non-brand keywords

The goal here is to create unique and useful content that prospects engage with, and that search engines understand and reward. On-page SEO helps search engines understand your content, so be intentional with your keyword research and placement of the target non-brand keywords in your pages:

• Headlines
• Copy
• Keyword density
• Page titles
• Meta descriptions
• URL architecture
• Internal linking (and anchor texts)
• Images and other media

The goal here is to rank for words and phrases (keywords) your ideal customer is searching for. Incorporate both (a) high volume top of funnel keywords, as well as (b) intent-rich specific queries.

2. OFF-PAGE SEO: Build links to your website from other websites 

This is what we refer to as “link building” in the SEO world. It is well known in the SEO-world that links are a huge SEO ranking factor. (Google leaders have publicly acknowledged this, as well 😉) Your website needs other websites linking to it.

Here are five practical ways any business can begin building backlinks to their website:

1. Partners: trade shows, events, associations, service directories, certifications, hiring websites. If your business participates in any of these, there is usually an opportunity for a backlink.
2. CREATE useful and relevant free content: Encourage organic backlinks with content that people find useful and worth sharing. Sounds simple (because it is), but so many businesses don’t do this to their peril.
3. PROMOTE that content on organic social media: The previous bullet is about content CREATION. This is about content PROMOTION. Both are important in link building. Not only are social signals a ranking factor (especially for Microsoft Bing), but as you share more and more on social media, your content will get picked up and linked to by other companies, journalists, bloggers, etc.
4. Digital PR: Work with journalists, influencers, bloggers, and podcasters.
5. Social media profiles and articles + review site profiles: Review sites like TrustPilot allow your business to share it’s website URL in its profile. Social media sites like LinkedIn and X have features where you can publish articles and link back to supporting content on your website.

This is not an exhaustive link building playbook by any means; it is a starting point for any business looking to get more serious about their search engine optimization (SEO). With link building, prioritize quality over quantity.

Want to dive into more SEO content? Check out our Local SEO Playbook for small businesses.