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What is SEO and why consider it?

08/19/202212/09/2020 by scmarketing

Your website is the centre of your digital world. Everything you do should lead back to it. Therefore, what it looks like, where it is found, how up to date it is and how easy it is to navigate are all crucial factors to keeping visitors on your website for longer therefore making it a success.

So, factoring in a tailored Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign into your 2021 marketing strategy will help your business be seen online.

SEO is a collection of processes that make it better for a website to be found through the search engines. Most online searches start with a few words relevant to what a prospect is looking for. So, if you’re an ‘accountancy’ practice in ‘Guildford’ then you would likely be interested in your company showing up on page one of a search relevant to these keywords.

Website optimisation involves looking at how your website is built, the keywords within content 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.

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Target audience

As part of your SEO strategy, you will need to think about who books your services and buys your products. If you don’t already know who your target audience is then take a look at our blog to help you create a persona.

Then make a review of your website and seen what updates you may need to make to content or imagery.

It may be a simple case of adding more call to actions, contact forms or changing content. However, if you think a new web design could be in order then drop us a line to discuss as we can also provide a website audit for you.

Keywords

Be specific with keywords for your business. Think about what your target audience would type in the search engine function to find what they are looking for. This is a great place to start to help you create a list of the keywords for your audience. We can help you build this list with reference to search volume and keyword difficulty so that you can factor in the right keywords to attract the quality leads.

Our blog on how to improve onsite SEO with keywords provides further insight.

Link building

As part of the ranking process, search engines consider the quality of links, awarding scores based on the usefulness and relevance of those links. Internal links can ease navigation within the website itself, so when you add a blog to the website make sure there’s at least 2-3 internal links included.

Getting your company details on directories is also useful to help with incoming links to your website. This provides an indication of how useful your content is to others. Less links will have an impact upon where you return in a search result for a given term.

We always recommend setting up your Google My Business page as it allows for you to post updates. Therefore, this is a simple repurpose of your own blog and provides a fantastic link back to your website.

Meta descriptions

Think about when you’ve recently searched online for something. You see a return of results where companies have great headlines and a paragraph of succinct copy that entices you to click the link instead of others. Behind the scenes you can create these paragraphs or meta descriptions on pages on your website – these are really good when it comes to blogs you may upload. Meta descriptions tell Google and other search engines exactly what each web page is about, what to display and how to display it in the results.

SEO Agency Croydon

By incorporating SEO into your marketing strategy, you can enhance brand perception and online presence as it helps your business rank better in search engines. This can help generate a better rate of enquiries due to improved visibility.

If you feel you need some support in getting your website Search Engine Optimised, then get in touch with Smart Cow Marketing. As an inbound marketing agency in Surrey we’re prepared to discuss your digital marketing needs further.

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Set up Google My Business

11/23/2020 by scmarketing

If you’ve been watching our Smart Cow ‘Marketing Minute’ videos, you’ll have seen that our focus over the last few instalments have been optimising your Google My Business Page.

In this video we look at the basic set up of your Google My Business page.

Set Up Google My Business

Once your business is verified you will be able to make amends to your listing. To do this log into your Google My Business account and select ‘info’ from the left-hand column.

Here you can update your business name, locations, area served, opening hours as you did when you set up. In light of the current situation with COVID-19, this is a good one to remember and keep on top of as it allows you to change the details that may be affected such as opening times or contact numbers if you are working remotely.

This means that when a prospect searches for you online they can swiftly see your trading hours and contact information. No need for second clicks to a website or social media account.

You can also set up links for appointments, you can add products and services opening date, business description, photos and much more. Make sure you complete as much as you can.

There are features here where you can add special hours for holiday periods, or you can mark as closed or even remove the listing completely.

Make sure that you keep all this information as up to date as you can as it will help with your listing.

If you’ve missed any of the previous videos in our series, you can catch up here.

Word in dictionary illustrating keywords

How to improve onsite SEO with keywords

12/02/202010/22/2020 by scmarketing

Keywords are essential for website optimisation and key to your onsite SEO strategy as well as Pay Per Click campaigns. But so often they seem to be veiled in mystery. In this blog we want to dispel any myths and give you a summary about what keywords are, why you should think about them and how they can help your website be seen in search engine results pages (SERPs).

When we refer to onsite SEO we mean Search Engine Optimisation. This is all about getting your website seen in the search engine results when someone searches for a product or service. It is about getting your business in the mix. While there’s a lot to think about with a complete holistic SEO strategy, here we’ll focus on keywords as this is something that you can work on yourself and you’ll soon find that your website benefits.

Quick website audit

Before you start thinking of key phrases conduct a quick review of your website to see where some gaps can be filled quickly. This will also help SEO campaigns. This will also act as a reminder of anything that is missing and needs changing.

So, firstly, we recommend you review all your website content to ensure that:

Your website is up to date for example, contact details, your team, images etc.
There are no broken links and you start link building. Add internal links to other pages on your website where you can. This all helps with ease of navigation and keeping people on your website as long as possible
Then consider adding a blog or news feed if you don’t already

Get in touch with us for a free website review.

The reason for a blog is that once you have done your review of your website, even though you might be updating content with keywords on your services pages, about us or homepage, these webpages generally remain static. The reason for creating your list of keywords is that you add them to regular ongoing content that enables you to add fresh content to your website with relevant information for your target audience. Search engines are looking for regular, relevant content.

If you already have a blog, then check back to see when you last added any content and how often you do this. The frequency of adding content is just as important as those keywords. The more you use the keywords in fresh content, the more chance you have of being found by search engines and this will help you improve your organic search ranking.

Keywords – be specific

With keywords it’s all about being specific to your business. Think about what your target audience would type in the search engine function to find what they are looking for. This is a great place to start to help you create a list of the keywords for your audience.

Let’s take an accountancy practice as an example. If you are an accountancy firm based in Croydon then make sure that you regularly say this on your website. But also think of variations of the phrase and what else people may search for in relation to your accounting services for example, tax advice, self-assessment, payroll, corporate tax.

Then start to delve a little deeper. Business owners want to work with companies that offer knowledge and expertise, so you can’t just add words to a webpage without any substance. Search engines don’t look favourably when you ‘stuff keywords’ on a page so you need to make sure you have high quality content on your website and that inclusion of a good range of keywords enhances what you have written. Not only should the keywords be relevant to your business it is vital that content is relevant to the blog in question. If people click on your link in search it needs to ‘do what it says on the tin’ to avoid visitors leaving too soon.

So, if you’re an accountancy firm wanting to promote your payroll services in a blog you need to be giving tips and advice to your prospects and include further keywords to help search engines, and that will interest prospects further, for example:

online payroll
payroll system
real time information
chartered accountants
data security
HR solutions
pensions auto enrolment

Keywords with a few phrases are sometimes referred to as long-tail keywords. They may not produce the volume of searches but they are usually more relevant. Quality over quantity is good to remember.

Whatever your business, keep an eye on your competition. As part of your keyword research see what they are writing about and telling their customers. If you look at their meta descriptions, that paragraph that you can see when a company appears in a google search, this will give a good indication of keywords.

Header tags, meta descriptions

Here’s a few more quick actions you can implement that will help organic rankings.

When you write blogs you should also consider adding keywords in the headings and subheadings or H1 or H2 tags (you can ask your web developer about these H1/H2 tags, in a WordPress site it is usually easy to see how to change these but sometimes a nudge in the right direction can help).

Remember to complete your meta description with relevant keywords with what’s on that particular page of your website.

Digital Marketing agency Croydon

We can work with you on your digital marketing strategy including a mix of tactics such as SEO services, social media management, Pay Per Click (PPC), email marketing and CRM – read more about our marketing services.

Further resources

Creating a Google My Business page

11/17/202010/12/2020 by scmarketing

Our Smart Cow ‘Marketing Minute’ videos are here to provide you with quick marketing tips for successful online lead generation for your business.

In our previous video we talked about the benefit of Google My Business. Our advice is that you make sure you have set up your business on this directory before you even think about setting up your social media accounts or creating a website.

This is because Google is one of the most popular search engines so it is essential that you are on it as it’s another way to help prospects find you. It also helps with your ongoing search engine optimisation strategy and improving your online presence.

Watch our latest video where Simon Cripps gives you an overview of how to get started on setting you your Google My Business page.

Create a Google My Business Page

Google My Business set up

Log into your Google account that you associate with your business or create an account if you do not already have one.
Then go to google.com/business/
If you are not already registered, then enter your business name, and follow the steps to enter your business category, your location, areas you serve and then contact telephone and website URL if you have one
Select a method to verify your listing and away you go.

That’s your Google My Business page set up in a nutshell.

Watch out for our next set of Marketing Minute videos as we delve into a little more detail as to how you can best optimise your newly set up page.

SEO agency Croydon

If you need help then give us a call at Smart Cow on 020 3137 1826 or book a free consultation to discuss our SEO services and other digital marketing tools such as social media management, Pay Per Click (PPC), email marketing and CRM – read more about our marketing services.