I have a small business that I have seen grow the last 2 years simply by word of mouth and me grinding out putting my network to use. I have a bare bones website that was simply made so I could say I have a website. I'd like for that website to start generating leads and sales because I'm at the point where I dont have time to grind out sales work.

Can anyone help or point me in the right direction on this? I know just about nothing when it comes to getting a website visible on search engines.

Thanks

I don't know much either, but I built a website for my father in laws business. Used Wordpress for the site and the rankmath plugin for SEO. I'm sure it could be better with a professional but I think the site gets decent impressions and clicks everyday.

I think rankmath mainly focuses on page titles, headings, content, for keywords

Paying Google used to be the most bang for the buck. I don't know what the latest AI options are, but I would look there first, today.

I'm a business owner, not a professional marketer so keep that in mind when reading this. Here is what my in-house marketing folks tell me: SEO is all about key terms and ranking as an authority. It's ranking without paying for it. You must produce content for this. We do it almost daily via new content pages, blogs, backlinks, video, etc. And it never stops because competitors don't stop and the algorithm changes. For key terms, I'd recommend SEM Rush or similar.

If you are trying to buy paid searches such as on Google, then you either need to bid on the words you want through Google Ads or pay professionals. It's basically an online auction that changes daily.

The poster above brought up AI. That's hitting Google hard. It's something we and our other marketing vendors are trying to navigate now, but I certainly don't have the answers. It's going to forever change the model of organic and paid searches results.

I would also recommend buying some ads on socials if your business fits the audience.

plowe32 said:

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I'm a business owner, not a professional marketer so keep that in mind when reading this. Here is what my in-house marketing folks tell me: SEO is all about key terms and ranking as an authority. It's ranking without paying for it. You must produce content for this. We do it almost daily via new content pages, blogs, backlinks, video, etc. And it never stops because competitors don't stop and the algorithm changes. For key terms, I'd recommend SEM Rush or similar.

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This is the way to go (at least in the current landscape ... who knows where we'll be 1 year or 5 years from now).

I'd also recommend making sure your the technical components of your site are up to snuff as Google and other SERPs take things like load time, broken links, 404 pages, etc into account when ranking your pages. These things will be more manageable if your site is small, but as you build out the first part of this (help articles, blog content, videos, etc.) it will get a bit harder to handle.

Ronnie Woodard
Senior Associate Director, Enterprise Marketing
University of Virginia Darden School of Business