Do you own a business in Costa Rica, and are wanting to know what to do to get more people to your website? SEO has been a roller-coaster of changes, thanks to Google, making it very confusing for most people. Many have just thrown their hands up in frustration and given up even trying. But, there’s a lot you can do. Here below are five great ideas to help get more potential clients to your website, and ultimately more to sign up for whatever you’re offering:

1. Get Linked! – As always, the most important thing you can do is to get “do follow” links from other Costa Rica travel businesses. The more the better. More than any other factor, this will send your ranking in Google’s search results higher. We can help with that, and it’s free! Contact us if you want help with that.

2. Keep Adding Great Content to your Website – If you can just one article per week it will be over 50 per year! Write on subjects that your potential clients are looking for, with titles that match what they’re searching for. For example “Best Restaurants in Manuel Antonio” or “The Night Life in the Arenal Areal”. Each of these articles will get a few hits per month, and after a couple years, you’ll have hundreds of potential new clients on your website every month. Plus, Google loves websites with regular, fresh new content. Just make sure your articles are all totally unique, well-written so someone actually wants to read them, and at least 400 words long.

3. Hire Interns and Volunteers – You’re probably too busy to learn about S-E-O or deal with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc, and you probably didn’t get into a business in Costa Rica so you could spend all day in front of a computer. However, you have a great resource at hand! During your low season, you can find young travelers who will help you with this for free, in exchange for lodging. People 18-22 are all experts in these things and it will cost you very little to get them on the job for you. It’s also good to get professional photographers to stay with you (for free) in exchange for getting you lots of new photos or video for your website, Facebook, Instagram, etc. People are visual, and Costa Rica has a lot to photograph. Make this work for you.

4. Mail List and Newsletter – It’s really not that hard… keep a mailing list of your guests who have stayed at your place, and write them an email every few months. Most of them probably fell in love with Costa Rica and would love to return. Write in your own unique voice and don’t sound like an advertisement. Add some great new photos and you’ll get more easy bookings. Send them links to any articles or news reports about you, and you may get a few links and more traffic to your site. A great email service to work with for your newsletter is mailchimp.com

5. Track the Basics – It’s difficult to know if you’re improving your website if you’re not tracking it. So keep a spreadsheet with weekly or month stats on your PR (Pagerank), Alexa Rank, DA (Domain Authority), Website Hits (from Google Analytics) and Backlinks (from Google Webmasters Tools) so you can watch as your stats slowly climb.

Another extremely important thing is to make sure that your site isn’t currently penalized (if you think it might be, email me and I’ll check for you myself), and, to make sure your site has it’s technical details right. This is hard to do for an amateur, but it involves making sure you’re using the right keywords in your titles, have a catchy description, handling photos correctly for SEO, etc. The above five things you can do on your own, but you should hire a pro if you suspect your site’s tech details aren’t what they should be.

Good luck!