After launching a new website you thought your were done right? Unfortunately this is not the year 2000 and the internet and competition has evolved. Last check, there was over 600 million websites competing to be in top searches.

Think of a website as a pretty nice house to look at and use. But its currently missing a driveway, some nice trees, landscaping and maybe garage and of course maintenance like painting or staining the deck. Are those all necessary, well not really, but without them its not as useful or nice of a house to look at and utilize.

With that analogy, we need to bring up the landscaping and maintenance to keep the house humming nicely along. The following list of items should be ongoing tasks to make sure your website has more curb appeal to the major search engines so they continually rank you higher then others, with less curb appeal.

Good thing is, most of these items are free. It only takes a little elbow grease to get a good ROI in your Search Engine Optimization investment.

• Update your blog (you have a blog right?) on your website at least monthly. Recommended is weekly.
• Review / Update your website pages at least quarterly to keep them fresh, (i.e. new staff member? updated services? change of wording to keep it fresh)
  • TIP. There are content writers that specialize in crafting awesome content. Sometimes if your not sure what to write, using there services could be of great value.
• Update your Social Media Platforms at least monthly. Although weekly is recommended
  • Facebook: Provide short excerpt of a blog and link back to your blog post
  • Twitter: Provide even shorter excerpt and link back to your blog (or other page on your website)
  • YouTube: If you have products or services, take a video and post it to your YouTube channel, then of course share the link on your other platforms
  • LinkedIn: This is the professional social media platform, great use when looking for employees and to promote your business
  • Instagram & Pinterest: Use one or both, but simply put, submit some nice pictures of your products or services offered with a short description 20 words or less.
• Update online business directories to assure they are using your correct phone number, company hours, address and of course website URL is listed. These are more of the popular ones. You may have to register, but for each one you update, it gives you a free link back to your website. Nothing wrong with that.
  • Manta.com
  • Yelp.com
  • WhitePages.com
  • AngiesList.com
  • Local.com
• Obtain inbound links from other websites that are credible. If you work with a vendor or 3rd party where your services end up benefiting them or mutually beneficial, ask if they would like to link to your website or even a blog post from there site.

As you can see, optimizing your website isn’t easy or quick, or a one time thing. But doing these will put your website in the forefront of all others who decided to skip over these tips.

Are there any tips or items that I am missing? Would love to build upon this one for all the small business and non-profits out there that could really use some help in this arena.