Four things every Small Business should do monthly to improve rankings on Google

To maintain and improve your rankings in a dynamic market, here are four simple tasks to complete frequently to maintain or improve your search ranking:

1. Verify Google Business Account information.
2. Check In on Google Locator.
3. Add blog topics and blog frequently.
4. Confirm all pages are working and links are active.

First, verify your google business information. In a study published by Sage, 30.5% of the 12,000 websites they surveyed could not complete a phone call with the number provided. That means over 3600 phone calls didn’t go through. For 48% of those incomplete calls, the phone number listed on the webpage had the wrong number of digits. Also, you need to make confirm the location google takes customers if you have a map on a page. Contact information accuracy is key. You have a customer trying to knock on your door or call your phone number, and they just can’t do it because of a typo.

Check in on Google Locator. Google Locator allows customers or employees to check in on the google locator app. If you have employees, ask them to check in when they get to work. It builds credibility. If you are a lawyer, check in when you go to the courthouse. If you are a hairstylist, check in when you get to work. Google recognizes check ins as one way to authenticate the business is alive and well because it has employees and customers taking care of business. Think of incentives you can give customers to add a review or check in when they come to see you.

Add Blog Topics. You are an expert in your business. No one knows it better than you as the owner. You can probably perform most of the tasks if needed because you had to at some point. Blog about it. Make sure to focus on your most profitable types of goods or services to attract those customer. If you specialize in foreign car repair, talk about the key things that the owner of a Range Rover needs to monitor as the mileage approaches 100,000. Are you a dentist that sells snore guards as an alternative to CPAP? Blog about it.

Check for Link Rot. According to a study by Ahrefs, 66.5% of have link rot which means links to other sites, pages, or content are not active. Often business owners don’t go to their site frequently or have someone who is tasked with monthly maintenance. If you have link rot, you can correct it by verifying, updating, or eliminating appropriate links. You need to hire someone or assign someone the monthly task of check each place you click through on your site. If not, a customer goes there and gets PAGE 404 ERROR NOT FOUND.

Summary. It’s not complicated, but it is critical. Often the routine tasks are overlooked because of the day to day fire drills running and managing the business. If you don’t have an employee doing this each month, hire someone to do it. It doesn’t cost much compared to one lost customer, patient, case, or deal.