1. Add Google Analytics to your Website

Google Analytics is a online software program that provides analytical traffic and behavior data for your website. You can find out some general and detailed information about how many people came to your website, where they came from and what they did once they got there. This is some pretty valuable information to have to not only tweak your website to provide you with your best return on investment (ROI), but also to learn about your audience and about your business. Best part about it? It’s FREE! Go to Google Analytics to signup and install on your website.

2. Analyze you call-To-Actions

You would not believe how many websites have call-to-actions that do not function! Or worse yet, they don’t exist at all! What is a call-to-action (CTA) you ask? It is a graphic and/or statement where you as the website owner is asking the website visitor to take action somehow. You may want them to contact  you for more information, or download a special report, or even pickup the phone and call you. Whatever your CTA is, make sure they exist, are complete, accurate, and work!

3. Create Consistency

Consistency can be key for success in marketing and your online marketing efforts. Make sure your brand and message is consistent with your online and offline marketing. Plus, make sure your message, tone, length of content and keyword usage is consistent throughout your website pages.

4. Review Your On-Page SEO

• Meta Tags - Meta tags are special pieces of code that reside on the back-end of your website. Make sure that both the Keywords and Description tag is present and unique for each page of your site.
• Title Tags – Title tags are again, a piece of code that reside on the back-end of your website. It can also be seen at the very top of your web browser’s window in the blue bar. Make sure that you have a unique title tag for each page of your website and make sure that it is relevant to the content and subject of the page.
• Internal Links and Anchor Text - linking internally provides food to search engines as they crawl your website. Link to your products pages from your homepage text, or link to your about us page from your products page. This easy technique will ensure that the search engines find all pages of your website and know what they are about. Plus, make sure the text that you link (anchor text) is a relevant keyword to the page that you are linking to. Don’t use the words “click here”. If you do this, then the search engines will think that the page you are linking to is all about the subject of “click here”.

5. Get Social and Get Local

• Get Social – Social networks are a great way to engage your audience(s) and grow and retain your business. Facebook is the most popular one, but there is also MySpace, Twitter and Linkedin amongst others. there are even some specialty networks like ActiveRain that is a social network specific to the real estate industry. My suggestion – Signup for Facebook and play around, then look at how you can start a business Fan Page to start promoting your business. Also, do a search for other businesses and brands that you personally use, and see how they are building and engaging with their audiences.
• Get Local – Local directories are the new phone books. Google, Yahoo, Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com, Yelp.com, etc. These sites are available for users to search for businesses and find phone numbers, addresses, and user reviews. Make sure your business is listed! Most all local directories include a free business listing. Go signup for them and get your business listed. Google Local Business Center is the first place to start. Hey – I bet I can get the phone number to a local pizza restaurant faster then you can walk to get your phone book!

Thrive Seminar Series

These Top 5 Things to do to Improve your website and SEO were recently presented in the Tennessean Media Group’s THRIVE Seminar Series.  Watch your Tennessean newspaper for upcoming dates and times of future seminars, or contact your local chamber of commerce. The next THRIVE Seminar Series will be at the Hendersonville  Chamber of Commerce on October 29, 2009 starting at 1:00pm. Visit www.tnmediasolutions.com/thrive to register.