5 Simple Tips on improving your marine website

Websites new to Google find it difficult to compete with the established sites that have been listed for many years. Time does make a difference. You might have the best looking, keyword rich website in the world but it does not mean it is going to rank in the top ten searches for your chosen keywords.

You can opt to spend money on expensive SEO consultants who will promise you improved rankings. Be careful of the consultants who promise instant results. In my experience, the ones who are up front at the beginning with realistic goals, are more likely to deliver within their promises. I do not suggest that you ignore this option, but before you spend your marketing budget on SEO Consultants or expensive Google Ads, it is worth making sure you have done everything within the realms of your abilities or your web designers skills.

Here are my 5 simple tips ….. learned the hard way!

• Make sure your site is mobile friendly...... If you are in any doubt, key in your website URL into the google mobile-friendly test found here...CLICK HERE  If you find you do not meet these criteria, you need to make sure your website is mobile friendly. Sometimes this can be asking your website designer to change it with a simple switch and others it can mean a new website. Google down-ranked all sites that were not mobile friendly on April 21st and as other sites make their web pages mobile friendly, yours will only drop further in the rankings.

• Keep your site updated... Out of date news, courses, products that are no longer available or events that have passed are the last things anyone wants to see when they visit your site. Google knows this. Google can identify sites that are constantly being updated and will rank them higher as that is what the user wants...up to date websites. If you do not have access to update your own website, I would recommend talking to the web designers and asking for access to all or some of the website.

• Add relevant content..... When people go onto your website, they are nosey (like all of us) they want to know what is going on in your world. Have a content management system within the site which allows you to add short videos (they do not have to be top quality, taken with your phone is adequate, as long as there is not too much noise). Add your social media feeds... the twitter feed is a good one, but no point adding it if you are not posting at least a few times a day. Short blog articles are good. They do not have to be more than a few paragraphs with an image or video attached but adding a new article each week or every few days will help.

• Use Google+..... Very few of us really get Google+ but if you do nothing else, post resourceful content with some posts being keyword rich. Even though your site does not pop up on the top page on Google, your posts will. It's a free way of getting your site known.

• Ensure it is Easy to Follow.... Have a complete outsider to your business navigate the site and give you their feedback. If they get lost or find it confusing, find a particular page hard to find, etc. then guaranteed google will too and this will have a negative effect on your ranking.

I know some of the above is not new to you but I can not stress enough how important it is to keep ahead of your competitors in the digital media world.  571 new websites are created every minute!