In such a chaotic time, operating your small business may seem almost impossible. With so many physical spaces either shutdown or under regulation, it can make doing business in-person difficult. This is especially true for small businesses that have a storefront where customers regularly engage to conduct transactions. Though this can cause headaches for many, it also presents a unique opportunity for many small businesses to start doing business online. All this begs the questions: What do your customers think about your business when they visit your digital storefront? Is your small business website optimized for discoverability? Is the content organized in such a way that it can be easily maneuvered by humans and machines alike? Does it clearly represent your business and give people ample opportunity to engage with your business? These are just some of the questions that will need to be answered if you plan on doing viable business online.

Though times are hectic, it has never been better to take another look at your website and ask yourself the aforementioned questions. The cherry on top is the fact that search engines — the most common way people find and discover businesses online — take all this into account when ranking and organizing your website.

As search engines get smarter about the organization and discoverability of the internet, it isn’t just important to have a website that is easy to maneuver but also organized in such a way that it can be easily indexed and found. Because search engines live on relevancy to the online user, what experience is your digital storefront giving your customer?

For years, optimizing your site for search engines meant keywords and overall speed. Now, the story is quite a bit different. Search engines can identify what kind of experience users are having on your site regardless of keywords and speed. Google can even recognize and index your site content without specific keywords or phrases being mentioned.

Though speed has a part to play, the overall user experience on your site is more heavily weighted in the balance. According to Google, “Great page experiences enable people to get more done and engage more deeply; in contrast, a bad page experience could stand in the way of a person being able to find the valuable information on a page.”

Thankfully, you don’t have to go it alone. The BARK Firm was founded on finding creative solutions to small businesses’ digital marketing problems. Contact us to get a no-pressure, free brand evaluation today!