10 Steps to SEO For Small Business

Transcription

1 Cove Digital

3 Local SEO in 2015 Once upon a time, long before social media, there was something called SEO. Pretty much from the get-go, SEO companies have either been loved or hated by business owners. In the early years, if you happened to hire a search company that got you results, you probably loved them (despite the mess they made of your keyword stuffed website). On the other hand, if you had paid a reasonable amount of money but were languishing in the depths of Google (again, with a keyword stuffed website) you probably hated them. Maybe still do. But SEO and the landscape of local search has changed for the better. You see, even though recent algorithm changes have undoubtedly penalised many websites that were subjected to the ugly tactics of cheap, black hat SEO companies, the shift has been to the benefit of businesses willing to invest time and effort into search engine optimisation. Yes, backlinks are still necessary. And yes, your pages do need to have intelligently placed keywords. But the old methods of stuffing as many exact match 3

4 keyword phrases as possible onto a page and firing crazy amounts of irrelevant links at it, have gone. When Google introduced the Panda and Penguin updates, these old methods of ranking a website were pretty much killed off. There are now so many other factors that come into play with ranking a local website. And that s seriously great news for you. Because as long as you choose a reputable SEO company, or you re able and willing to invest a decent amount of time into acquiring and applying search marketing knowledge, you can achieve results that will completely transform your business. Google searchers are the most valuable customers to a local business There has been a huge amount of noise around social media in recent years. And it certainly works very well for some businesses (think restaurants rather than accountants ) Yet social media fails to achieve even a tiny fraction of the volume or conversion rates you can expect from Google search traffic. And that is mostly due to the missing ingredient of social, radio, print or TV advertising - buyer intent. Web searchers are using search engines to type in 4

5 phrases and find solutions to their problems. Therefore, they are already willing participants in the purchase cycle. They may be looking for a carpet cleaner, a dentist, an accountant or a solicitor Whatever the search, they are ready to buy. They simply need to find and trust the solution. But people who are socialising on Facebook or Twitter are not in a buying frame of mind. You have to interrupt them in order to even get your product or service noticed And that s not always appreciated. Acquiring targeted search traffic should be your absolute number 1 priority. There is nothing more valuable to the sustainability of your local business. Here are 10 steps that you can put into practice right now (keep reading till the end - the last 2 are possibly the most important!) They are the 10 fundamentals of local SEO. They might not get you right to where you want to be, and you ll likely need to implement additional strategies at some point But if you haven t already covered these steps, make sure you do so immediately. You will see the benefit in your website rankings. 5

6 1. Keyword Research Your first step is to consider the keywords that customers will use to find you. If you re a solicitor in Bristol, then you can be confident that people will be typing Bristol Solicitors into the search engines. Or if you live in London and provide wedding photography, then your customers are also going to be searching for Wedding Photographers in London. Pretty basic stuff so far But you may find that some keywords (your main ones) will be difficult to rank for without enough quality backlinks. And so, it makes sense to not only target competitive keywords, but also to include longer, more exact and varied phrases on your pages (long tail keywords). It not only appears less like spam Google is also getting smarter in relating longer phrases to main keywords. The AdWords keywords tool is a great place to start. 6

7 You ll get an idea of how many people are searching for your services in your local area. It ll also provide evidence of whether you need to be broadening your keyword phrases or expanding your business into new areas if there are enough searches in different locations. 2. Optimising your website Do you have a blog? If not, then make installing one a priority. Blogging is more important than ever. But it s not a tool to try and rig search rankings by targeting search phrases with content that lacks any relevance or value. And this applies to all your other pages. Don t even think of stuffing your web pages with keywords whilst offering poorly written, thin content. Not sure about how many keywords will qualify as spam? Here s an (awful) example: If you re looking for carpet cleaning London, we re the best carpet cleaning London company you ll find. We provide the best carpet cleaning London because we re the best carpet cleaners in London Opening sentences like this were very common a few years ago. They still are to some extent. Google hates it. And so will your website visitors. You will gain nothing from repetitively cramming keywords 7

8 into your website pages. TIP: For Wordpress sites, the Yoast SEO plugin will help you enormously in ensuring you have your keywords positioned in the optimum ratios and areas of the page. Being a local business, you ll definitely need your location mentioned on your pages. Just don t overdo it. Your sentences should flow naturally and not be obviously constructed for SEO purposes. You may also want to create specific location pages in order to rank for surrounding towns and areas near your location. To achieve this, we advise creating location pages that target each individual town, with corresponding titles, H-tags and content. Do be careful with this strategy though. Your content must be relevant to the area and unique. DO NOT simply copy and paste other content from your site onto a new page and amend a few sentences here and there. Make sure the content is 100% unique, relevant and provides additional value to your readers. Another page that is important, is your contact page. It needs to contain the following for search engine purposes and good conversion rates: Name of your business Your address Your phone number(s) A contact form for submissions 8

9 Other pages that add value to your visitors will include a testimonial (social proof) page, services / products pages, an about us page and your blog (that you MUST regularly update with search friendly content!) Your blog is extremely important as it enables you to write posts that address customer concerns and every post you write means an additional indexed page for the search engines. If you can answer the following 3 questions with a YES, you re very much on the right track: 1.Is the page intelligently optimised to target a keyword? 2.Does the page add value to your website and serve a purpose? 3.Does the content on that page help your customers? Now, let s take a look at off-site SEO for a local business. 9

10 3. Local Listings and Citations You may have heard that links from poor quality directories have no value and could even be potentially harmful. And that s true. But there are also some local directories that definitely do add value and help with your SEO, even if they do not contain follow links. Citations in good local directories are very much part of Google s algorithm and help inform and understand your business and location. Here are some that are worth the effort of registering with. There will also be additional directories and websites specific to your industry that will be of value to you

11 Be sure to enter your details in the same format on these sites. Use the same wording for your business name, address and phone numbers so that there are no inconsistencies for the search engine providers. 4. UI, UX and Bounce Rate Make your website as easy to use as possible. If you have a badly designed website that is cluttered and difficult to navigate, you re visitors are likely to leave pretty quickly. This impacts your SEO because a high bounce rate and poor dwell time will signal to Google that something is not right with your site and this will be reflected in your rankings. To help understand the interaction of your visitors and improve your bounce rate, install Analytics and Webmaster tools. They are extremely useful for monitoring statistics including bounce rate, dwell time and search queries and websites that visitors have landed from. 5. Sitemap Sitemaps help search engines spiders find information on your site. A good sitemap will enable search engines to find and understand content they may not have found on their own. 11

12 If you don t have a sitemap, get one ASAP. You can build a sitemap using: 6. Social Media & Google+ Social signals are important for SEO. Social shares help with credibility and tell google your website is trustworthy. You will undoubtedly benefit from using at least 2 social platforms, and we suggest that Google+ is nonnegotiable. Adding your business on Google+ is vital as you are able to verify your location and add your business to their maps. This can not only make a significant difference to rankings (if you haven t already completed this) but it also means you may place in the maps listings that are often shown on the first page for local business searches. It is also very much worth the effort of posting content from your site on Google+. Although it may not have the user numbers of Facebook or Twitter and it may seem that few of your potential customers are using the platform, we believe there are huge advantages to using it for SEO purposes. Google+ posts are crawled and indexed almost immediately and there have even been suggestions 12

13 (despite Google s denials) that +1 s and shares actually impact rankings and that they are used as signals. Whatever the truth in this, it certainly makes sense that Google would understand your business more easily if you are listed and participating on their products and platforms. Start engaging and search for and join relevant Google communities. If you comment share and +1 the content of others, they are likely to reciprocate. Another benefit to using Google+ is that you are able to ask your customers to review your business by simply ing a link to your Google+ About page. Reviews provide additional fresh signals to Google, with the added benefit of showing star ratings in your maps listings (the stars are displayed in gold once 5 reviews have been submitted). This also makes it easier to stand out from competitors who have neglected gathering important social proof. 13

14 7. Site Speed Google is caring more and more about site speed. Some argue that it is not hugely influential, and that it is only one of about 200 signals that is used to determine rank but it certainly plays a part in ranking certain websites. And that would make sense as it means that Google are concerned about service and providing the best possible user experience (UX). After all, isn t a website that loads quickly, consistently, more user friendly than an erratic and slow loading site? And wouldn t it make sense to offer a searcher a faster site with better UX higher in the search rankings? Bottom line: Improve your site speed. Use the Google tool, Pagespeed Insights. It will rate your website speed and tell you how to improve it. Also check out pingdom tools 14

15 8. Responsive Design Responsive web design first made waves in Responsive website pages reformat themselves to the device being viewed on; pc, tablet or mobile. This means that a good user experience is maintained. And when it comes to SEO, a responsive layout will help improve your rankings. Google not only recommends responsive design, it also prioritises responsive websites in search results when they have been searched via a mobile device. Responsive design also lowers bounce rate and improves user experience which means that not only do you likely increase your conversions but it will also help improve your rankings. 15

16 9. Backlinks Despite getting a bad rap, and in many cases for good reason, backlinks are vital to SEO. Matt Cutts, head of Google s Webspam team recently stated the following: Links are still the best way that we ve found to discover [how relevant or important somebody is], and maybe over time social or authorship or other types of markup will give us a lot more information about that. Pretty much tells you that backlinks are the best way to rank a website, no? And how about this, also from Matt Cutts: The philosophy that we ve always had is if you make something that s compelling then it would be much easier to get people to write about it and to link to it. [...] Make a fantastic website that people love and tell their friends about and link to and want to experience. As a result, your website starts to become stronger and stronger in the rankings. But there is a problem with backlinks: It s can be damn difficult to get content shared and linked to if you re not in a very sexy industry! I mean, if you actually run a bricks and mortar local business or service, it s pretty hard to come up with the 16

17 type of content that others will naturally want to link to. So, what are your options? Well, you may need to proactively seek out possible linking opportunities. And this is where business owners often get confused - or worse - get it dreadfully wrong. Backlinks are extremely important in getting a website ranking highly in competitive industries. And because getting quality backlinks (the right way!!) is a time consuming process, short cuts are often taken. It is for this reason why some SEO companies have a bad name and why some businesses can literally see their income disappear due to a Google penalty. It is way too easy to succumb to the temptation of blackhat SEO tactics in order to improve the rankings of a website in a tough sector. Don t do it!!! 17

18 Here s what you shouldn t be doing in 2015: Link exchanges: If you frequently partner with websites in an unrelated field in order to exchange links, you are leaving yourself exposed to the threat of a penalty. It can flag as an obvious effort to manipulate rankings. Excessive Link Building: If you build too many links too quickly, you risk your efforts being flagged as SERPs manipulation. Instead, focus on building fewer, higher quality links. Private Blog Networks: The subject of a recent crackdown, private blog networks enabled (lazy?!) SEO companies to insert client links in websites that they had already created themselves solely for the purpose of passing on link equity. For example, if an SEO agency had a cleaning business for a client, they could have a home or cleaning related blog that would be populated with thin, rehashed content that would exist in order to have a vehicle to insert keyword rich anchor text. This strategy can work brilliantly, initially. But get caught as many did in 2014 and you ll see your website vanish and your business suffer overnight. And talking of keyword rich anchor text Bad Link profile: Your link profile is very important. It used to be the case that if you obtained backlinks with keyword rich anchor text like Solicitors London you d almost certainly rank very highly if you happened to be a Solicitor in London. But, Google have clamped down on unnatural link profiles and if you don t have a variation of anchor text, business name links and naked URL s in 18

19 your profile, you ll undoubtedly get noticed for all the wrong reasons. You need your backlink profile to appear almost as if there has been no thought put into it. Think of it like this: would a client even know how to use (or the benefit of) keyword rich anchor text? Likely, it would be a naked URL or your business name they d use for the link. Buying links / Guest Posts: If you re considering paying for links, you better be sure you know the exact source and quality. We d suggest this is way too risky a strategy for most. It s simply too open to abuse and fraught with risks. And, Google have stated numerous times that you WILL be penalised if they know you have acquired paidfor links. And as for paying for posting a guest post you have submitted to a website for the sole purpose of a backlink...just think about that for a second Surely it should be the other way around you, the writer, being paid for your content??? Or at least not paying at all? I mean, it makes sense to provide a great guest blog article to a quality website for no payment, knowing you ll likely get a link. And that s fine. But if you re having to pay for it, then the site probably lacks the authority you d want anyway. Again, get caught, and you re toast. So, now that we ve covered what you should be avoiding, let s take a look at sustainable link building tactics for a local business. We ll cover a few aspects of where you can obtain backlinks and how you should go about it. And guess what? 19

20 It all requires a lot of time, work and effort. And that is what you pay your money for with a modern, progressive SEO company. Some sources of backlinks: Newspaper / Media Websites: If you re a business with a story to tell, you should definitely contact reporters of your local newspapers and offer them a great story relating to your business. Reporters are overworked and underpaid. So make it as easy as possible for them. your pitch and include all relevant details, including a link to your website. You ll get great publicity along with a quality backlink. The higher the Page Rank, the more value in the link. Related Websites and Blogs: Yep, paying for gust posts is a no-no. But if you can contribute a unique article that provides value to a website with good traffic, you not only benefit from another great backlink, you ll also expose your business to a new source of traffic and customers. This tactic is becoming increasingly difficult as webmasters become immune to receiving unsolicited contact from other blog owners. You should also be doing some internal linking to posts and pages on your site. Just be sure to vary the anchor text and use descriptive text. Internal Linking: Don t neglect linking to other pages and posts within your site when appropriate. If you re mentioning a topic you ve previously covered and describing a service you provide then make sure to include a link. Be sure to vary the anchor text and often use longer, descriptive text. 20

21 Track Your competitors: One of the benefits of hiring an SEO consultant is that they should be tracking the links your high ranking competitors are building. By using effective SEO software, your competitor backlinks can be found, analysed and good quality links links duplicated. Asking for links If you are approaching a webmaster or business owner looking for a link, outreach is a great tactic. But, like everything, you ll get the most success if you put the The s need to be specific and really demonstrate the value you will provide to them, otherwise they ll be perceived as spam. A great way to find sites that may link to you is to check which sites have already provided a link for your competitors. Open Site Explorer is perfect for this. Then, make a list of websites and contacts and take a look at their blogs and find 2 or 3 related posts on each site that could have been combined to produce more indepth blog post (and make sure you pay attention to the 21

22 style of writing). Here s a great template you can use use that will get you results: Here s a great template to use that will get you results: Subject: I d love it if you wrote about (insert first name), I ve really enjoyed reading your blog posts on (website name). I particularly enjoyed reading the post about (insert blog post). I noticed you also wrote about (insert blog post). Actually, I would love to read a post that combined all this information in one in-depth article and would provide massive value. I know you re probably way too busy to be writing a post like this at the moment and so I m going to make you an offer. How about I write it for you free of charge? I already blog at (insert website). I think your readers would love it and as I already check in on your posts, I m more than familiar with your writing style. How about I send you the post once I m done and hopefully you ll agree it matches your standards? Look forward to hearing from you. (insert your name) 22

23 Please do try this outreach template. It works, and I think you ll be surprised at the results. outreach is a time consuming process that many SEO companies neglect or get wrong because their strategies are lazy and lack personalisation. And that s a shame, because you can acquire some great exposure and links using this method. 23

24 10. SEO Audit Getting an SEO audit is possibly the best thing you can do to understand where you need to start from with search engine optimisation. A thorough SEO audit will evaluate your site against factors that are used by Google to inform rankings. In addition to covering many of the above points, it will also pick out all the finer technical details and errors that you need to be aware of. An SEO site audit will review vital factors such as: titles, tags, speed, keyword density, on- page optimisation rating, social media stats, backlinks, competitor analysis, linking opportunities, keyword difficulty, alt tags, headings, duplicate content issues, 404 errors, current ranking positions and much more. It will include a comprehensive breakdown of any issues that may be impacting your rankings and recommend strategies that will fix errors and improve your site. It is pointless spending your time trying to build links or writing loads of content if your site is being hindered by issues you unaware of. This step may be at number 10 on our list, but it is the most important thing you can do right now. Simply fixing long-standing errors may be all your site needs to start climbing rankings. 24

25 Are you ready to fix your website, improve your rankings & grow your business? We offer a FREE SEO Audit that will provide all the information you need to fix your website issues, improve on-page optimisation and give you the solid base you need to work from. SEND MY FREE SEO AUDIT We also offer an extremely cost effective monthly SEO plan. Once you factor in the time, learning and implementing search marketing, a proven SEO company can save you a small fortune. And that s before you even invest in any paid for SEO software tools. By outsourcing your SEO to Cove Digital, you benefit from the following: Work with a proven SEO company that gets results Huge time savings No risk of Google penalties we only use progressive white hat tactics Save money Improved rankings Monthly rankings reports Weekly website crawl and health check Advice on ongoing content requirements Safe link building What if you could realise the huge benefits of improved rankings: more leads, more sales and higher customer spend? 25

26 What if you could benefit from our years of experience to steal a march on inferior, yet higher ranking competitors? We can help. REQUEST MY MONTHLY SEO QUOTE