Has the your site traffic trickled from a jam to an open highway? Your content might be the problem.

If you keep careful watch over the traffic your website generates, you might have recently noticed a shift in numbers. Depending on the rank of your site up until the last few months and the content on your site, it might have been a significant change.

In some cases, sites experienced a bump in rankings. Unfortunately, many also saw a dip in their traffic shortly after Google’s most recent update called Hummingbird.

Plenty of material has been written on the Hummingbird changes, but many of the people affected by the change have neither the time nor desire to wade through all of the suggestions and updates necessary to deal with the changes.

Business owners using their site as a marketing tool want traffic without investing weeks in SEO training. This is why many hire professional SEO companies to keep rankings high.

This is a smart move for many businesses, but not everyone can afford SEO. If you are the type of business owner who is just getting on board with having an online presence, the nuts and bolts of achieving high rankings might make your head spin. That’s completely understandable, considering some of the greatest experts in the industry have a tough time mastering Google and other search engines.

If you want to build a respectable online presence for your business, but you want to do so without investing massive amounts of time and money, there are three things you should know. These three things are recommended as a result of the Hummingbird update and not only help you boost your SEO, but also give you a better all-around site. Your should never just build a haphazard site designed to outsmart Google. It should be to make your website a high-quality, accurate representation of your business.

1. Feature High-Quality Writing on Your Website

If you’ve spent any time researching how to build a decent website, you know the cliché “content is king.” Unfortunately, this might not make much sense if building your site is a secondary part of your job.

Content includes the variety of material featured on your site. There is static and dynamic content, and your site should have both. Static content includes all of the information you provide for visitors that remains the same from month to month and year to year. There might be changes occasionally, but for the most part, once it’s set it does not change.

Dynamic content includes thing like blog updates and article postings. This is the type of content that tends to overwhelm business owners using a website to market their business. (Read a bit about what you can do to conquer overwhelm here.) Keeping your dynamic content fresh is important when it comes to ranking well. You must stay on top of developments in your industry and you must keep your dynamic content relevant in order to appeal to both search engines and site visitors.

2. Spice Up Your Content

Quality writing is important for your site, but you can only add so many words before people get bored. Search engines also expect you to have more than just written content on your site. Pictures and videos make it possible to create an interesting and entertaining site, while still adhering to the overall message of your company. As a matter of fact, video is one of the best ways to communicate your message to a whole new audience. Visitors not willing to read lengthy blog posts and articles might be willing to watch videos.

3. Do Not Rely on Your Website to Enhance Your Online Presence

At first glance, you might think you have no time for adding social media to your marketing plan. There are also a number of people who assume social media is just for fun or an excuse to waste time. Though many people are wasting time on social media platforms, savvy business owners understand social media is an important part of boosting their online reputation. Google has even begun taking social media activity into account when ranking sites. The quality of your site is no longer the only factor in getting your site ranked. Search engines are evaluating your online reputation and taking into account how much “clout” you have across the web.

Business owners are overwhelmed by all there is to do to keep their company growing.

How Can Business Owners Build a Strong Online Reputation?

Building a reputation on the Internet takes time and effort. It takes creativity and the ability to create a marketing web that links all of your efforts into a cohesive plan. Your social media activities can improve traffic to your site and your site can make your social media posts more relevant. Social media also gives you an opportunity to build relationships that can eventually lead to business opportunities. The key is to be creative with your approach and keep an open mind.

These tips are fairly basic, so SEO experts and social media strategists are likely already familiar with most of what is offered here. I encourage experts in the field to jump into the conversation and share what they have to offer. Those who are online novices and trying to figure out why their main Internet marketing tool is suddenly a dud can gain a little insight to the problem from these tips. There’s no need to fear the hummingbird or any future updates rolled out by Google and other search engines. The changes are positive for credible businesses and will benefit those who most deserve it in the coming weeks and months.

Keep in mind you can always hire someone to help you with improving your site. There are full-time SEO experts out there, but you can also pick and choose what needs improving and do it little by little if that’s what your budget allows.

Not sure how to improve your site content or use social media in your Internet marketing strategy? Email me with your questions!