SEO for Long Island Businesses

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What is Search Engine Optimization? 

Search engine optimization is making changes to your website to improve your visibility in search engine results. Brands want their websites to rank near the top of search results for specific keywords. The better you rank in search results, the more traffic you’ll get on your site.  

4 Reasons Why SEO Matters for Long Island Businesses

Effective SEO is essential because: 

• 68% of all trackable website visitors come from natural search (1) 
• 75% of searches stop on the first page of results (2)  
• 78% of clicks go to the top five search results on the first page (3) 
• The top result on Google gets 13X as many clicks as the tenth result (4) 

What Drives Your Search Rank? 

Various factors contribute to how high your website appears in search results. These include: 

• The quality and depth of your content on the topic 
• The speed that your pages load 
• How much website traffic you receive 
• How many sites have content related to the topic 
• The number of sites linking to your content (link building) 

• How recently you posted/updated the content 

Search engines like Google also favor websites that present well on mobile screens and have well-designed pages and sitemaps. Everything they do is about finding great content wherever it may be. Google and other search engines have very sophisticated technology to identify the best content on a particular topic. In this case, they will concentrate on ensuring relevant content for decision-makers because they are your target audience. Years ago, companies tried to use a specific search term many times on one page to improve their rank. Now, Google calls that “term stuffing” and penalizes you for it.  

SEO Essentials For Long Island Businesses

You want to rank highly on terms that will help you attract business opportunities.  Sometimes those will be very popular terms, but those often are appealing to many businesses, which can make it harder to rank highly. Sometimes it is more beneficial to focus on specific “niche” terms that appeal specifically to your target audience. Keyword research will be essential here in determining the right mix of keywords.

Remember that you want to attract businesses that are looking for products and services., Avoid keywords that appear to drive a lot of consumer traffic unless you also sell directly to individuals and households. Pinpoint the terms that will matter more specifically to business decision-makers so you can focus your optimization efforts on the best opportunities.

How To Develop an SEO Plan 

First, identify the best words for your effort. Find an SEO services expert who knows the Long Island business market. An SEO company is one approach to take; another is to work with a leading business media company like Long Island Business News. Once your expert resource has identified the right SEO keywords, you can work together to build content that can rank highly as a search result. 

Note that writing quality content that indexes well is both science and art. SEO efforts can’t drive results overnight. Google and other search engines track billions of web pages, and changes in your rank will happen over weeks and months. There are many software tools to help you track your rank.  

Get in Touch 

At Long Island Business News, our mission is to help companies do more business and grow the industry. If you’d like more ideas and insights on making SEO work for your business, get in touch with one of our marketing experts by filling out the form below.  

1. SearchEngineLand, 2019 
2. MOZ, 2019 
3. SmartInsights 2022