To help your business grow, you need to tell people that you exist. These days your shop window is a virtual one – it’s your website. However, just like a bricks and mortar premises your website needs to be found, it’s just that these days that means via a search engine. Just as you would have a sign on your window advertising your products and services you need to let people know where you are.
So, this is when you may hear about the term Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). In a nutshell, SEO is a marketing strategy about a set of processes that make it better for a website to be found through search engines and build your online presence so that you rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Here’s our top tips on setting up and maintaining SEO to help your business rise in organic search.
- Know your audience that you’re marketing to: For this you need to create an online persona. Think about the goals or challenges of your target audience. Start with their job role, imagine their personal goals such as business growth, saving the business money or a future promotion. Then imagine what challenges they face and start to note solutions for these and how your product or service can help them. Already you can start to see a personality form in front of you.
- Draw up a list of your keywords and phrases: Website optimisation involves looking at how your website is built, the keywords within any content creation, on your website as well as understanding your target audience and their search behaviour. Armed with this background you can build a strategy to improve your rankings in the organic (non-ads based, natural) search results. Most online searches start with a few words relevant to what you’re looking for. So, if you’re an ‘accountancy’ practice in ‘Brighton’ then you would likely be interested in your company showing up on page one of a search relevant to these keywords.
- Longtail keywords: Think about being very specific on keywords, which are sometimes given the term ‘long tail keywords’. For example, if you are searching for an accountant you may search for “Accountants in Croydon”, “Accountant for business start-up”, “Chartered accountant in Surrey,” or “Accountant for SME Tax Return”. It’s likely to be a lot easier to rank for this as there will be less competition, but, while you may see less traffic to your website as not many people will search such a specific phrase, it will help it to be targeted.
- Meta descriptions: This is the short paragraph that sits beneath the company name when you conduct a search online. By completing the meta description when you upload content to your website, you can create a succinct paragraph which includes keywords to helpfully direct prospects to your website. Meta descriptions are a website’s way of telling Google and other search engines exactly what each of your pages are about, what to display and how to display it in the results.
- Alt tags: Complete the description of your image in the ‘Alt Tag’ box when you upload it to your website. You can be descriptive about what’s in the image but also relate back to a relevant keyword if you can.
- Headings: Think about whether you can add keywords to your blog title. Or at least in your subheadings. The h1 tag is also key and should not be missed on any page as it should contain information about the content of the page. Search engines check the keyword consistency between the header tag and the content on the rest of the page.
- Try local search: Decide on the geographical areas you want to target to find new clients and use that for your future digital marketing campaigns. Think about your content on your website, is it specific for the location you’re targeting? Have you mentioned that you are offering a service for people in a specific area anywhere on your website?
- Populate Google My Business: This is a free tool to use and well worth the time and effort to complete. Google is one of the most popular search engines after all, so you may as well let them know about you by filling out as much about your company as you can. The very basics to complete are your website URL, opening times, address, contact number and email as well as a short paragraph about your company. But it is worth exploring what else you can complete as this will all help Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and your company being seen in search, further optimising your website.
Get in touch with us at Smart Cow today for you Free Consultation on improve SEO in Croydon and beyond.