Keywords

SEO

Beginner’s Guide to SEO

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With over 4.6 billion internet users worldwide, and over 7 billion searches on Google a day, making sure your website is noticed is a must. Which is why it’s important to consider using a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign to improve your online presence and make your website visible.

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of optimising your content to improve its ranking on search engines results pages (SERPs), increasing your website traffic.

Search engines use bots to ‘crawl’ pages to gather information and place these pages in an index, where various factors are analysed to determine where they rank on search engines.

As a business, it’s important that you have a clear outline of what your objectives are before implementing an SEO strategy. Having an idea of what you’re striving towards will help formulate an SEO plan and the steps you’ll take to reach those goals.

If you’re unsure as to what your SEO objectives may be, think about what your business objectives are and how implementing an SEO campaign can help you reach those objectives.

Target audience

Your target audience are the people looking for your business’s services online.

Understanding your target audience is crucial to SEO, as you’re essentially tailoring your website to reach this audience.

A great way to better understand your target audience is to create an online persona. Think of your ideal customer and create a character based on that person – this will become your online persona that helps you tailor your marketing material including website content to target that person.

A few tips to help you create this persona include reflecting on the person’s goals and the challenges they may face trying to achieve them. Think of how your products and services may be the solution for those obstacles. These steps work together to help form a personality that gives you a better understanding of how your audience thinks and how you can market to them.

Our blog has further information to help you create an online persona.

Keywords

Once you have your target audience agreed and in mind, you can start to think of content for your website which will include keywords which will form a vital part of your SEO strategy.

Keywords are words and phrases that search engines use to determine what is on your website. When used properly, keywords can help boost how your website ranks on search engines, driving more traffic to your website.

With keywords it’s all about being specific to your business. With 53% of website visitors coming from organic search, thinking about what your target audience would type in the search engine function is a great place to start to help you create a list of the keywords for your audience.

However, a word of caution, excessive keyword use on a webpage can have an adverse effect on your rankings – this is known as keyword stuffing. So, high quality content should be fresh, unique and relevant to your target audience. Use your researched keywords within your web page which will help search engines understand what is on that page. Using the relevant keywords will ensure that visitors are getting the content they came for and not leaving too soon.

There are a number of keyword research tools online to help you work out what your keywords are, such as the Wordstream and Moz keyword research tools, and our how to improve onsite SEO with keywords blog also provides further insight on keywords.

Meta-descriptions

Another great SEO tip is to improve the quality of your meta-descriptions. The meta-description is a small snippet of text that appears under your webpage on search engines, to act as a summary of what the audience will find on your page and help boost click through rate (CTR) on SERPs. On search engines such as Google, the meta-description appears as a short paragraph below the web page title.

Good meta-descriptions are up to 160 characters and include targeted keywords.

Image optimisation

The optimisation of images on a website is also important and can be done in different ways. One way you can do this is by ensuring that every image has alt text – a written version of what the image contains. This helps:

  • When the image fails to show up for any unknown reason, as the alt text will be used as a substitute,
  • Screen readers as they read out the alt text to help the visually impaired better understand the page
  • Allowing search engines to crawl and rank your website

You should always try to include targeted keywords in your alt text as they’re another indication to search engines that your page is relevant to that search.

Optimising your images also includes making sure that they’re not too large, as the larger an image is the longer it may take to load. This may slow the load speed of your website and increase the bounce rate, the percentage of visitors that visit a page and leave instead of visiting other pages too. Research carried out by Google has shown that 53% of mobile users leave a website that takes longer than three seconds to load, further proof that you need to manage image size and load speed. 

Link building is the process of having internal and external links throughout your website content.

Internal links to other pages on your website help by:

  • Easing navigation around your website
  • Enabling search engines to crawl your website more easily  
  • Guiding traffic to specific pages
  • Improving engagement and time spent on your website

While internal link building focuses on connecting pages on your website, external link building is all about your website URL being on other websites which then direct back to your website – also known as a referring domain. 

Search engines look at the quality of the links and the quantity to help give you a domain authority score. The domain authority is a report of how relevant your website is in any specific area or market. Websites with a high domain authority score will be seen as a more trusted source and rank higher than those with lower scores, so it’s important to increase your score where possible.

The best way of getting your website on another domain is through online directories and Google My Business is perhaps the most important online directory for you to be on. For more details on Google My Business, visit our Setting up Google My Business blog.

We’ve also listed some alternative directories to help you grow your list of online directories to be featured on.

Web design

How your website is designed has a larger impact on your SEO than you may think.  Search engine bots emulate the behaviour of visitors, so if they see that users are leaving your page quickly due to bad user experience, your page will get ranked down. The opposite also applies if visitors have a good user experience your website ranking will increase.

That’s why having a well-designed website can be a strong contributing factor in your SEO strategy. The best websites:

  • Are easy to navigate
  • Have fast load speed
  • Create brand consistency
  • Are responsive

A responsive website is a website that adjusts its appearance according to the device it’s being viewed on. Websites are not only being viewed on desktop devices,  mobile devices account for half of website traffic. This makes it clear that having a responsive website is crucial, as you can’t guarantee what device your website is going to be viewed on. Also, responsive websites load much faster, this improves user experience and helps your website rank higher in search engine results pages – Google certainly favours websites with faster load times.

As a digital marketing agency, we offer web design services tailoring a website to the needs of the business.

Landing pages

An SEO landing page is a specific page on your website used to convert visitors into leads. Landing pages usually have the following:

  • Succinct content with keywords relevant to your target audience
  • Bold calls to action (CTA)
  • Forms – for lead generation
  • Thank you pages – to continue the conversation and market something else to your leads

Landing pages are a great way to gather data whilst also generating leads. When creating landing pages, it’s important to pay attention to how visitors interact with the web page. For example, if you see that your page has a lot of visits, but the conversions aren’t matching this could mean that the layout of your page needs to be reworked. We would always recommend creating a specific landing page if you progress with a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaign.

SEO agency Croydon

There’s a lot to consider but we hope this guide has given you a good overview of the type of activity you can implement to kick start an SEO campaign for your business.

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 support in getting your website optimised, then get in touch with Smart Cow Marketing to discuss your SEO needs further.

SEO agency

SEO mistakes to avoid

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Your website is the centre of your digital world and right now it is the go to place for most people searching for products and services as COVID-19 has ushered along digital transformation at some pace. So, being found online is crucial.

This is why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a key element of your inbound marketing strategy. SEO will help generate website traffic through various tactics such as completing meta descriptions and H1 tags. As well as writing fresh and relevant content for your website in the form of a blog with researched keywords and good navigation including internal links. The list goes on (we’ve listed further resources at the end of the article for you to tap into to help with your SEO campaigns) however for the purpose of this blog we wanted to highlight what to avoid so that your website is not negatively impacted.

Link building is an important part of an SEO strategy. External links helps indicate to search engines that your website should be visited as they indicate importance and relevance. 

However, these links need to be relevant and from trustworthy sources to build trust with prospects. So, the better quality of link from a trusted website is more likely to indicate to a search engine that you are a good quality website to show up in search results.

So, the main thing to remember is that it is quality over quantity. Understand and know the referring domains.

More on how link building can improve optimisation.

Don’t do nothing

It’s worth remembering that a search engine should be held in high regard like any other visitor to your website. So, you need to indicate to all visitors that you are current, relevant, knowledgeable and most importantly that you are open for business.

If the content on your website is out of date this will impact on where you appear in search engine results pages. The more people that view your fresh and unique content will help indicate to search engines that you are a good quality source of information relevant to return in results pages.

Update your website frequently, add new blogs, images, links and downloads.

Don’t copy content

Don’t infringe copyright. Respect fellow businesses. You are all trying to do the best you can to attract more customers. With blogs being a key part of an SEO strategy, you will ideally be uploading at least 2-3 blogs a month and much more if you have the time. But your content needs to be unique. You can’t copy an article as you will infringe copyright laws and incur penalties. Not only that, a search engine will see that it is duplicate and plagiarised content and this will go against you with organic search results.

Ultimately you are the thought leader in your field so talk about what you know. Help solve your customers and prospects challenges by giving them tips and advice. All the things you know about. This then comes from the heart and makes your brand authentic and trustworthy. Plus, with good quality unique content, this will help you in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Poor meta descriptions

The meta descriptions are ways to assist search engines in understanding what the page is all about. They can also provide the valuable first few lines in a search result listing – that little paragraph under the title that you can see when your search is returned to you. By not completing this you are failing to let search engines and potential visitors understand what they can read about on that specific page. So, when you complete it on the backend remember to include keywords relating to what is on that page.

Keyword stuffing

So, you’ve established your list of relevant keywords – those phrases that you want to be found for in search engines results pages. You’ve created a content marketing schedule of future blogs and you start to upload them to your website with keywords included. What you must not do is stuff that content with keywords. It will be repetitive, lack thought and knowledge. The content will not engage, it will not be insightful and therefore will end up with your bounce rate increasing. And, most importantly, search engines don’t like it.

Search engines will then penalise you for creating an article that is not relevant  to your business. Readers might also feel cheated into reading a pointless article and this will go against you with search engines and lost prospects!

So, be thoughtful with your content and remember quality over quantity. It’s more important to have a quality read with one keyword over anything else as people will return to read more, people will share your article which will encourage new website visitors.

Broken links in your website can have a detrimental effect on your website’s performance. Keep tabs on this through tools such as Semrush which can alert you to broken links. Fix them as soon as you can to avoid confusing search engines and creating a poor customer experience.

Not set up for local SEO

Make sure that you are set up on Google My Business – you may as well tell the biggest search engine that you are open for business, your website, contact details, address latest updates and offers. This will point back to your website providing a quality link. Repeat this process with other directories and make sure y our contact details are consistent. Watch our video alternative directories to Google My Business to help with your SEO.

SEO Croydon

So, you’ve got the idea of what to avoid. SEO is about attracting leads which includes search engines. In a nutshell, it’s important to create quality, unique and relevant content for your website to help improve your online presence in organic search and help drive traffic to your website.

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

SEO agency resources

Word dictionary search SEO

What is SEO and why consider it?

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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.

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.

Book a FREE consultation
Word in dictionary illustrating keywords

How to improve onsite SEO with keywords

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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:

  1. Your website is up to date for example, contact details, your team, images etc.
  2. 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
  3. 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

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