Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the key digital marketing tactic working invisibly and effectively in the background to help improve your visibility in search engines.
Incorporating SEO into your overall marketing strategy is important right now especially as we’re reliant on the virtual world to shout about our business attributes. What’s key is about generating leads. You don’t want just anyone visiting your site, it’s about quality leads.
To help you achieve this, we’ve gathered together our top tips to kick start your SEO campaign and some refreshers for those businesses who need to revisit this.
1. Review website navigation
To have any success in Google search your website needs to be easy to navigate. This is not just about your menu, it’s the internal links that you include on web pages to help the search engine crawlers to use links and understand the content of your page. Conduct a review of your website to see if you have good quality links directing visitors around your site.
2. Fix broken links
Make sure the internal links on your website work. Think of a search engine as your visitor, it doesn’t want to be sent to a ‘404’ page as much as an actual visitor. It won’t be marked well for you. We can conduct a FREE Website review which will indicate errors such as broken links that you can then fix.
3. Keywords
If you don’t already have a list of words that you want to be found for, then now is a time to conduct keyword research. Spend some time really thinking about what your target audience is searching for to find you. What’s your business offering? How are your services solving a problem for your customers? These types of questions can help you get to those keywords and phrases (longtail keywords) that you then use to create content to optimise your web pages.
When you review your current content against this new list of keywords, there’s a few tips and tricks to implement that will help you stand out in search engines. Use the keyword in the title of your page and if possible, the URL – however this may be too difficult if you have a lot of backlinks already to the pages so you may not want to change them. We would usually aim to place a keyword within the first paragraph.
It’s also key to have your meta description completed and with keyword included. This is the short phrase that you see below the website URL in search results.
4. Review web page URL
Don’t be clever with the name of pages on your website. The URL of your pages should in effect ‘do what it says on the tin’. If you’re an accounting firm and one of your pages is about tax advice, then that should be the URL. It’s the keyword you want to be found for.
5. Link building
You may have articles or comments on other websites which include a link back to your website – in other words a ‘backlink’. Google monitors links reviewing quantity and quality. This helps build a websites’ authority. However, be careful, you don’t want links placed on any website, the emphasis is on quality and relevance to your website.
6. Local SEO
Local SEO can help you target local clients and prospects. Create content that includes information about the specific geographical areas you’re targeting. Also complete your Google My Business page. It helps Google verify your business.
Digital marketing agency
This is just a short overview of just some of the search engine marketing tips you can conduct for website optimisation. If you need help from a digital marketing agency to kick start your SEO strategy and improve your online presence then get in touch with us for your free consultation.