Consumers are using the internet to find products and services more now than ever before. With the new year fast approaching, this is a great time to tune up your website for 2022.

You do not have to be a search engine optimization expert to have a great foundation. There are several free online tools that analyze your website and give you a list of things to fix, along with instructions on how to do it. Fix what you can and then hire an expert to do the rest. Search Engine Journal has a great article on Essential Website Optimization Strategies (tucne.ws/weboptimize).

Essentially, all you need is a website that is easily found by consumers, gives them the information they need, and converts them into paying customers. Sounds simple right? It is easier than you might think.

To be found by consumers, your website must be optimized for the search engines like Google, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. This means your website must be easy for their robot crawlers to understand, contain relevant information, load quickly and be appealing to consumers. If you have a WordPress website, plugins like Yoast SEO will walk you through each step of this process.

Since more buyers are using mobile devices, it is critically important your website appears and functions well on all mobile devices. Google Search Console has a tool to show you how your site performs on mobile devices. Their main dashboard has dozens of other free useful insights, too.

Finally, speed is important to consumers. If your website does not load quickly, consumers will start a new search right away. Search engines track this β€œbounce rate” and if yours is too high, they may stop delivering your site in search results. Try running Page Speed Insights to see how fast your website loads.

Take a few minutes and analyze your website. There are many easy things you can do to improve it for the new year.


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Bill Nordbrock is vice president of community relations for SCORE Southern Arizona, a nonprofit that offers free small-business counseling. For more information, go to southernarizona.score.org or call 520-505-3636.