Michigan SEO Company | Full Guide [View Our SEO Packages]

You’re here because you were searching for a Michigan SEO Company

This is a perfect example of why partnering with a Michigan SEO Company is so important for any small business.

Showing up first when a potential customer searches Google for your products or services.

There is no single better way to drive consistent, motivated buyers to your business.

If your website is not performing like you had hoped, you’ve made a great decision by searching for a Michigan SEO Company and landing on this page.

I will be covering everything you need to know with a step-by-step process we use to get our customers found online.

Should you hire a Michigan SEO Expert?

Being the first to show up when someone searches for your product or service is an extremely lucrative asset to a business.

So why do so many businesses struggle with their websites underperforming?

Well, SEO or (Search Engine Optimization) can be tedious to say the least. It’s kind of like a game of Chess, there are a lot of rules and it requires a good strategy.

There’s a seemingly infinite amount of reasons a website might not be ranking well, and let’s not forget about how fickle Google can be.

Their constant updates and algorithm changes can definitely leave you scratching your head, or maybe pulling out your hair.

Overview

Nearly 75% of all searches begin with using Google. Combine that with the fact that 67% of all clicks go to the websites in the top 5 positions in Google, you begin to see how important SEO really is.

If your website or service page is ranking anywhere else besides the first page, it’s basically the same as not ranking at all.

Users do not generally click page two or beyond.

To ensure you get your website to the first page, it’s important to understand how search rankings are actually controlled.

How Search Works

There are three moving parts to a search experience.

You
The Search Engine (in 90% of cases it’s Google)
The Potential Customer

Let’s say someone is searching for a Malpractice Attorney in Grand Rapids.

When the searcher types in the search query, Google will pull the top 3 local business listings and show them in what is referred to as the “Local Pack”

These are local businesses being shown because your search query indicates a specific city, and that’s where they’re located.

Directly below those local map results will be the area we’re going to cover, known as Organic Search Results.

This area is considered prime real estate on the page. These top positions garner a majority of the search traffic.

The best part is, it’s not necessary to be located in that specific location to be on the first page.

MI SEO Ranking Factors

There are two main categories that are heavily weighed on when considering website positioning.

On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO

On-Page SEO refers to the search engine taking note of how your website is laid out, and what the website is about.

Search engines send out spy’s; that’s right, these spy’s are called “Site Crawlers”.

These spiders crawl your entire website and report pertinent information back.

Once the information is reported back, the search engine will determine where your web pages will be placed within the search engine.

Best On-Page SEO Practices

Content

The content of a web page is the single most important factor, by far. Google and other search engines are relentlessly working to improve their user experience by displaying only the web pages with the best content.

To create great content, you must service a need or supply a demand. When developing your content, provide solution based principals vs. feature based.

Answer common questions, in short sentences, with frequent breaks. This makes your content easier to consume.

Using images frequently is another best practice. You should make bold points, or fine details in the form of an image.

In fact, the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text.

Good content is linkable

Any decent Michigan Web Design Company will design a website with linkability in mind.

Most modern websites are built to be shared, with Content Management Systems like WordPress becoming increasingly popular.

Here are the elements that make up a website’s Linkability:

From: A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting & On-Page SEO

HTML Language

Once you nail down the content, and are writing in an answer directed response, it’s time to get into the finer details.

HTML is a language that most modern websites are programmed in. Specific elements of this HTML language tell search engines what the content on your page is about.

In modern content management systems like WordPress, it’s as easy as installing a plugin like Yoast.

Let’s take a look at the four parts of HTML you should optimize for each and every single piece of content you produce.

Title Tags

Think of Title Tags as Newspaper Headlines. They’re the first thing you see when you turn the page.

In HTML language, these Title Tags are called H1 tags.

You should only use one H1 tag per page. It should be your main focus keyword, and it should effectively describe what the page is about.

The H1 on the page you’re currently reading is Michigan SEO Company | Full Guide [View Our SEO Packages]

You should always include your keyword in your H1 tag, preferably at the beginning like we have above. Our target keyword was “Michigan SEO Company” in this case.

Meta Description

The Meta Description is basically your free Ad on the search engine.

It’s a snippet of content that the search engines display directly below the title of the page in the search results.

If you optimize this (like you should) Google won’t cut off your description with “…” like it does with a non-optimized description.

It is also common best practice to include your target keyword in this snippet (same keyword used in your H1).

Make the best of your 160 character limit for the meta description. Think with the searchers in mind instead of search engines.

Schema

Schema is a subset of specific HTML tags that will improve the way the search engine result pages display your content.

This helps build trust with potential customers before they even get to your website. It’s extremely important, and often overlooked.

For example, the author of the above example with Bitcoin used Schema to create the rating that Google displays on the SERP. It’s a rather small factor, but definitely good practice.

Here’s another example of optimized schema markup.

Subheadings

Just like your title or H1 tags, your subheadings are a way to outline your content and give your readers easy reference points.

Although they don’t hold as much weight in terms of SEO, they still are crawled and indexed by Google’s Index Crawlers.

Often times we will include other relevant or low competition keywords in the subheads and our clients rank for not only the target keyword, but other related keywords with the same piece of content.

On this page we are targeting the main keyword Michigan SEO Company in our title. Below that we target a related keyword, “Michigan SEO Expert” with a Subhead H3 tag.

Images

Every great website has great images. Search engines love to see images and videos embedded within your content.

Using images not only keeps your viewer reading your content longer, it also is an excellent tactic for beating out competing content.

One mistake often made is not optimizing image file names and/or image alt tags.

Optimizing the image file name is is easy as renaming the file to include your target keyword or related keywords.

An image alt tag is basically the title of the image, it tells search engines what exactly that image is depicting.

It’s best practice to create variety when creating image alt tags. Don’t use your target keyword for every single image. Break it up and create variations.

An example might be;

Michigan SEO Company
Best Michigan SEO Expert

Both are keywords we’re targeting, and it adds variety to ensure Google does not penalize the content for keyword stuffing.

Mobile Responsive

You’ve likely heard this preached over and over again. Mobile friendly websites are no longer an option.

With sites like Facebook having 54% of their users on mobile devices only, that equates to 900 million mobile-only users.

Most modern Content Management Systems like WordPress already have mobile responsive templates from the start.

You can easily check your own website on Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool

If it turns up with errors, there will be more details on what you’ll need to fix to pass the test. You can either do this yourself or hire someone to do it for you.

Google ranks websites that are mobile friendly better than websites that are not. Also, a mobile responsive design will cut down on bounce rates (people clicking off your page).

Page Speed

Technology has ruined our patience as human beings. With today’s smartphones pulling 4g signal. Even when we’re mobile we have extremely fast access to content on the internet.

If your website is bogged down with junk scripts that stall the loading time, you’re inevitably going to experience a high bounce rate.

This means that people will be coming to your website and clicking off quickly. This is not good in the eyes of search engines and thus your rankings will suffer.

Google’s recent speed industry benchmarks proved this point. Their research shows that “the probability of someone bouncing from your site increases by 113 percent if it takes seven seconds to load.”

Keyword in URL

You’ll want your target word included in the URL of the page. So if your target keyword is “malpractice attorney” –

Your domain would ideally look something like this;
https://domain.com/malpractice-attorney

What you do NOT want your URL to look like would be;
https://domain.com/post=1998347

This does not tell the search engines what the web page is about.

Use your keywords in the URL, it’s a requirement.

Importance of HTTPS/SSL

With there being so many security breaches these days, many merchant processors are requiring website owners to have an SSL Certificate for their domain to accept credit card or personal information.

Search engines have taken this into consideration for quite some time now, but Google is not stopping there.

They’ve now displaying any non-secure domain like this…

Moving from non-secure to secure can be a tedious process depending on where your domain is registered.

Some hosts provide this service complimentary, others don’t. It’s best to contact them first, then hire someone to make this change for you.