Now is the time to start thinking about your search engine optimization (SEO)

Even if you feel like running to the hills and hiding away from the subject, you shouldn’t. It can be hard to get your head around if you are unfamiliar with SEO but hopefully our friendly introduction will get you focused and more confident with an understanding of how to build a happy relationship with your website visitors and search engines.

Keywords

Firstly, an important thing to note is that Google has unleashed an ‘over-optimization penalty’ which is targeting websites that use too many keywords (relevant words and phrases used to help people find your site) on each web page. So, the moral of the story is – don’t be greedy and don’t be a hoarder- Metaphorically speaking anyway! Keep your keywords simple and use a maximum of five per page. If you need some help and inspiration with finding the right keywords you could use Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool will help you to find relevant and up to date words inline with today’s trends. Alternatively, get in contact to discuss you needs with our expert team.

Content

Try to make interesting content which your visitors will enjoy and find useful. Not only do you want to keep visitors looking at your site for more than 3 seconds, you also want to please the search engines… as dull as that might sound this is a great way to become more visible. The more content you produce of a high standard the more likely search engines will add more of your pages to their search indexes.

And, of course, we aren’t just a pretty face, we also share great ideas of what kind of content to create…

• Podcasts
• Videos
• Posting industry blogs
• Reviews
• Graphics

We hear you- creating quality content is hard work! You can come face to face with plenty of creative road blocks if you are trying to juggle many tasks by yourself. There are a few things you can do, hire a pro. This can come at a cost, however, it is worth it in the long run. Let’s be honest, building a successful business is playing the long game, success doesn’t show its face overnight. But in the meantime, keep your eyes on the idea that producing good quality content will engage visitors and impress those ‘oh-so’ important search engines.

Link building

The basic concept here is to get other websites linked to your own. If you consider these linked sites as your friends and you are running in a popularity contest, then you are far more likely to win if you have more friends than everyone else- Link building is a similar idea to this.

Ideally, you want to create quality links known as white hat techniques as this approach is considered more ethical. Google are also taking action on websites that use black hat techniques (yep, you’ve got it, the opposite to white hat) such as spamming. Avoid over using keywords and over posting the same content. If you are giving the time to improve business, then you might as well do it on good merit.

You could produce a blog and post it on some blogging websites, maybe even reach out to relevant industries for instance, if you have a restaurant business you might like to link up with food brands you use or sell. Probably best you don’t link with your direct competitors… just a suggestion!

Sponsorship is another way to engage companies and charities, this will help to develop positive links, however, we would suggest you actually engage, and not just make it about a financial transaction. Attend events, write up about them, link up on social media and show interest across all your platforms. This will help to build you an audience in an organic way.

Social Media

While your links to social media profiles may not always count towards your search engine rankings they will get you some attention and will help to drive visitors to your website which in turn is still useful to you.

Finally

Finally, this has been a brief look at SEO, my goodness there is a lot more to it, but hopefully you feel like you have had a friendly handshake with the concept and feel a bit more at ease. Click the link if you would like further support from our SEO team.

We’ll leave you with one last thought, and that is, the importance of tracking and monitoring your SEO progress. You can do this in many ways – one way is to use Google Analytics. Through Google Analytics you can learn about who your visitors are, how much time they are spending with you and the type of keywords they are using to find you. This can then feed back into the types of keywords you are using on your pages.

We wish you good luck and if you need a hand- do get in touch!