You’ve got the makings of a great business – the next step is to attract an audience online. But the web today is so busy that it can be hard to command the attention your product or service deserves. Here are some tips from the experts on the art of search engine optimisation (SEO):
Why SEO, and what’s involved?
Search engine optimisation is about getting your company and its web content higher up the search engine rankings. If you’re successful, you’ll be one of the first names potential customers see if they’re scanning the internet for the type of solution you offer (without paying for advertising).
Be targeted in your efforts, says David Angus, performance marketing strategist at service design and digital consultancy Pancentric. “Know what you want; focus on business areas that you need to grow. Have a clear goal, not ‘I want to rank #1 on Google for term X’.”
Choose the right keywords
Keywords (those words and terms users might type to end up at your web pages) provide search engines with important signposts, so they can serve up relevant content to users.
Determine which keywords your target customers might use to search for products and services you sell.
Pooch & Mutt, a specialist in premium dog nutrition, has learned to optimise its site for “long-tail key phrases”. Founder Guy Blaskey says: “It would be very difficult for Pooch & Mutt to get to the top of Google’s rankings for ‘dog food’.”
It wouldn’t want to anyway, association with such a generic search term could mean its website attracts people looking for cheap dog food, which is the opposite of what the company is promoting.
Under ‘grain free calming dog food’, on the other hand, Pooch & Mutt comes out top. “Not only is it easier for us to get to the top of Google for this, the person searching is also far more likely to buy as it’s precisely what they are looking for,” Blaskey adds.
Content is king
One of the best ways to improve SEO rankings is by producing fresh, relevant and insightful content that’s of value to the target audience.
The best way to do this is to create a blog that is linked to your website, advises Nikki Scrivener, director of Fourth Day PR. The more posts there are, the more pages there are for search engines to crawl, and the more content there is for people to find through organic search. “Newer posts and articles are rated more highly to give greater relevancy for searches,” Scrivener says.
“Statistics show that the more a company writes or blogs, the more traffic and conversions they will get,” says Paul Hunter of Liberty Marketing, a digital marketing agency based in Cardiff.
This has been the experience of HGVtraining.co.uk, a UK training provider for drivers of large and specialist vehicles. It has set out to be a leading source of knowledge in its field. Co-founder Gary Benardout says: “Our site now ranks higher than the official Gov.uk site for HGV training and licensing, because Google sees us as more of an authority. Today, more people visit us for information on HGV training than any of the official channels or competitors.”
Content isn’t just the written word
Visual information plays a significant role in online content, so it’s important not to neglect this and other media when developing an SEO strategy.
“Creating short product videos and adding them to specific product pages can have a marked impact on both traffic and conversions,” says Chris Savage, CEO of video hosting platform provider Wistia. “Once the video has been created (which can be done cheaply), you can get SEO benefits by including structured [searchable] data on the page. This ensures that the videos get indexed and will be ranked for target keywords.”
Analyse what’s working (and what isn’t)
To exploit SEO to best effect, you need to be able to assess your results. “This can be broken down by using Google Analytics (a free analytics package) to measure current success, and Google Search Console (a free tool that any website can use) to spot any difficulties the search giant has in understanding your site,” says Charlie Williams, of digital marketing agency White.net.
Google Analytics can provide a lot of valuable insight about where web (and mobile) traffic is coming from, while Google Search Console provides valuable information on how Google ‘crawls’ and indexes a website.
Appeal to mobile users
The way users interact with your site is an important factor in search rankings, so make sure it works as well on mobile devices as on bigger screens. Google has now made this an explicit part of its ranking criteria.
“You can use Google’s mobile friendly test to check if your website is mobile friendly,” says Laura Hampton, digital marketing manager at Nottingham-based digital agency Impression. “If it resizes and reformats to fit the screen, great. If it’s small or difficult to use, it will struggle to do well in Google search results.”
Optimise your website for local search
If local business is important to you, make this a target for your SEO activity. This should include listing your website in online directory services. “Also create a Google Business listing, which is free and puts your business on Google Maps,” advises Liberty Marketing’s Hunter.
“Do a search for Google My Business and claim your business listing,” adds White.net’s Williams. “You can offer a good amount of detail, select the appropriate categories to appear under, and add photos and contact details. There are also tools such as Moz Local, which make this easier for a small monthly cost, or services from agencies which will take care of the whole process for a yearly fee (often less than £300).”
This advertisement feature is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Simply Business, the UK’s biggest business and landlord insurance provider, and sponsor of the supporting business growth hub.
