SEO for Entrepreneurs, presented by Mike Hardaker

The beauty about teaming up with someone like Mike is that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to SEO for entrepreneurs and Gliffen knows a thing or two about web design and build for entrepreneurs which makes us a force to be reckoned with.

Mike points out at the Women’s Roundtable in Jackson, Wyoming that there are over 1 billion websites on the world wide web right now. That’s a lot of websites. The point is, we all want to stand out among the pack.

Organic SEO & Social Media should work as a team

How to accomplish that? The answer is organic SEO (search engine optimization) and social media. The beauty of social media is that you can reference content that’s already on your website into your social media’s posts. No matter if you use Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest, they are all viable platforms to reference content on your website. Hardaker mentions that Instagram isn’t the most viable social media platform to regenerate visits to your site because it’s unable to link back to your website with each image. There is only one place (up in the profile bio area) where it can be referenced. Great point made,  but forgive us Mike, we are not necessarily ready to write them off just yet but we are totally on the same page with it not really helping with the success of your website per-say.

Hardaker highly recommends Pinterest. Pinterest is a social media platform that allows you to organize ideas through a main image and a direct link back to an associated website. The beauty of this, is that you can share your content directly from your website to this platform and continually re-share your content here, breaking up ideas into different categories like: Craft night, Hair-dos, Halloween, Business, Quotes, Weddings, etc. If you maintain a blog on your website, even minimally, you’ll find that it only helps you when you re-share that content with Pinterest.

Your Website & SEO

Hardaker points out that each page or blog post that exists on your website has a Page Title and Meta Description. There are also subpages of your website, which Google loves to see – this means that they understand what it is your website has to offer.  If you built your website on WordPress, optimizing your site for good SEO will be simple to navigate.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

Yoast SEO is a tremendous tool and it’s FREE to use their basic version. With Yoast they rate you on how you are doing with your content and how it pairs up with your “focus keyword.” The idea is they work in harmony together so Google can understand it the best way. Like a traffic light, Yoast gives you a RED light if you need to work on it more, YELLOW light if you are doing okay and a GREEN light if you are good to go!

Some additional tips:

• Choose wisely what your domain name will be, by industry, location, pertinent keywords that people actually search
• Be aware of file naming when loading images or documents to your website, let’s be descriptive
• Write your content with literally what you do
  • BLOG! It only helps with fresh new content, at the very least once per month.

Some resources that Mike highly recommend you use (Gliffen agrees):

• Google Keyword Planner – Free AdWords tool that helps you build Search Network campaigns by finding keyword ideas and estimating how they may perform
• Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console) – scans your website for errors and gives suggestions on how to improve your site
• Google Analytics – keeps track of the traffic coming to your website, gives you the demographics of the visitors, geographically where they visit from, what devices they are on, etc.

Read more about Mike Hardaker here: mike-hardaker.com