Running a small business is tough, so when it comes to marketing your business, you need advice that cuts through the fluff, the pomp and circumstance and gets to the point, right? Well, that's what we hope this blog will do for you. By the end of this blog, we hope to have passed on some of the best SEO tips you can implement to your website to help your website perform better organically in the search engines.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and is the process of optimising not just your website but your entire online presence to ensure that you attract more visitors from search engines. Often, people think of SEO as just being about keywords and ranking higher in Google, which is part of what SEO is about, but it is so much more besides.
Before hiring anyone to work on your SEO strategy, you must understand what SEO is and if it is the right fit for your business as it stands now. What SEO is not:
Like most things in life, a solid SEO strategy can be a brilliant success or a complete failure, and the difference often comes down to the planning. Formulating an SEO strategy allows you to plan what changes need to be made, how they all fit into the greater plan and when they need to be implemented.
The best way to start any SEO strategy is to know which direction it is heading. Most people we speak to about SEO will always come to the default answer of "rank higher in Google", - but what for? Which keywords? What will the benefit be? Do you want to attract more local customers? More national ones? Do you want your website to be a knowledge hub on a topic, or is it pure eCommerce? These are all valid questions you need to answer, as each one will determine which direction your SEO strategy will take.
Top 5 things to plan into your strategy:
1. Keywords: which to aim for and how.
2. Content: how often, topics and how much.
3. Technical SEO: which aspects need to be improved and how soon.
4. Measurable data: how are you planning to measure the results?
5. Prioritisation: which parts do you plan to tackle first, and which will come later?
Many business owners focus on being number one in Google for a given term; they often become blind to the benefits of a well planned and implemented local SEO strategy. Ranking nationally for some keywords can be beyond many small businesses. Honest, it can be so expensive to compete against worldwide and national brands that it is simply beyond the reach of many small businesses. Instead, a well-implemented local SEO strategy could reap the rewards!
Having a well-maintained blog helps you reach more potential customers by targeting a wide-ranging set of keywords, more so long-tail keywords. Uploading regular content is required to achieve strong results, but more importantly, its consistency and relevancy to your brand are critical.
Using your blog to answer questions and address concerns about your products and services is an excellent way to connect with your audience and allow your expertise in your field to shine through.
For many years now, Google has been telling website owners and SEOs that users need to be at the centre of the journey for your website to perform well SEO wise. Focusing on how visitors use your website, what pain points they experience, and addressing them has SEO benefits, and conversion rates will go up too!
The key areas to focus on are:
If focused on and improved, all the above aspects will boost your SEO rankings, customer happiness, and conversion rates, so they are worth spending some time and money on.
Keeping track of how things are progressing will allow you to know where things are currently and if improvements need to be made to your strategy to either get things back on track or get things heading in the right direction. Using tools such as Google Search Console will allow you to see where your website traffic is coming from. If you are looking for more in-depth website analytics, you will need a tool such as our in-house system, where we can see all aspects of a website and how customers use and find it.
SEO takes time to work, and you will not always get it the right first time. Some aspects of SEO can take weeks, if not months, to start taking effect, and SEO is very much a compound effect marketing in that once the ball is rolling, it will continue to deliver results.
There is no secret sauce for SEO, and no one can say if you do this - this happens, or even guarantees results. What works for the coffee shop in Hull might not work for the coffee shop in Manchester - which is why SEO can be so tricky and why people often think of it as a dark art!
If you need any assistance with your SEO for your small business and have tried a few things yourself and still getting nowhere, you probably should consider hiring an SEO agency to help.
Here at E2E, we are experts in small businesses and how they operate and here to take the strain from your shoulders when it comes to getting an online presence that works for you. We are a team of dedicated small business specialists who know precisely what it takes and have the tools, the skills and the passion for helping your business succeed online.
352A Buxton Road Stockport SK2 7BY
