Ten tips to make SEO work for your business
SEO can often be seen as the holy grail for business growth that comes from online traffic, and it can also be seen as something that is complex.
While most businesses are aware that a solid SEO strategy adds value, quite often, online basics are missed by businesses which translate to missed opportunities.
We talked to Dilate Digital who offer SEO services in Perth and here are their ten tips that will help you unearth any missed opportunities and help you formulate a strategy for your digital presence working for your business.
1.Know what your ideal customers are searching for online
Without the existence of business, there is no customer. Whether you are a local business, or you are looking to reach a National and Global market with your products and service offerings, it’s always good to get inside the hearts and mind of your customer.
Think of both long tail keywords and short tail keywords to help set the scene for your SEO strategy.
Spending time researching and brainstorming in this area will help you get relevant content out to your ideal customer, and help search engines send the right traffic to your website.
2.Be consistent with your content
Once you have your SEO strategy sorted, it’s time to get your content happening on a consistent basis. While the thought of producing content can be daunting for some, it is important to ensure that you have a solid plan which is resourced appropriately.
To support SEO goals, review your content as follows:
- Review existing website pages, and whether they need updating
- Write blogs that meet minimum word counts (800+ words are ideal) and share your content
- Create guest posts & media features that link back to a relevant page on your website
- Write cornerstone content (the big chunky service offering value packed pieces that other content can link back to)
Got writer’s block? Start by thinking about frequently asked questions that customers ask you about different products and services, and at different times of the year.
It’s also a good idea to mix your content up between evergreen and current events so that if there is a hot issue your customers are asking about, you can be proactive in communicating with them.
A good example of this for businesses is the impact of State and Federal grants as a response to COVID.
3.Season your blogs and pages with search terms, don’t stuff it
Google is not a fan of stuffing – best leave that for Christmas Turkeys!
Search engines have been designed in a way to work out who is trying to “cheat” by keyword stuffing a post or a website page. To help with this, it is a good idea to utilise SEO in page titles and one or two headings with a focus keyword and secondary phrase within written content.
If it sounds like you would say it naturally, it will flow better. Repetition of target words will just make your content sound like someone who loves to talk about themselves in third person all the time – it’s a bit odd.
4.Name your page links appropriately
This can quite often be missed. It’s really a case of less is more for SEO and beyond. Adding a page link style guide to your SEO strategy can help you and your team to set your website up for success.
The less words the better, so think about things like www.yourbusiness.com/type-of-service-location
or
www.yourbusiness.com/product-for-ideal-customer
Try to keep any URL extensions between two and four words.
5.If it’s slow, it’s gotta go
A solid SEO strategy is awesome, however, search engines really do care about the site speed, as this enhances the user experience for a customer.
If you have digital assets that are slowing your page performance down, look at how you can rectify them.
Sometimes it can be simple tactics like resizing images so that they are in KB’s instead of MB’s (often the case if you are working with a photographer who has not provided web optimised images).
At other times, it can be plugins or apps, or too much side bar clutter, so look at anything that is not serving a purpose, or bringing you Search Engine joy & Kondo your content.
Since 2010, Google has included site speed as an SEO performance factor, so this can be a good quick digital win.
6.Remember, humans read your content
You want that customer to book a call or to make a purchase, and with any luck, you want them to repeat that pattern, and tell their friends about you and your amazing business. It’s OK to put your brand personality into your copy on your site – how else are you going to become the point of difference for a customer.
If you are writing just for the SEO powers that be, you will quickly lose customer interest.
People genuinely click to learn something from you, so always ask what purpose your content is serving, and who you are writing for.
7.Meta matters
There’s a good chance that Meta gets missed as quite often, content creators or business owners in Perth don’t quite understand the importance of it to SEO.
Meta descriptions are the first snippet of content that is displayed when Google dishes up your page as a possible clickable solution for whatever a potential customer is searching for.
You will generally see a box at the bottom of a webpage that shows your meta description. Make sure it is relevant and original, as while Google loves copywriters, it doesn’t love copycats.
If you are a WordPress user, tools like YOAST can be helpful to help you manage any Meta challenges, and if your website is on Shopify or Squarespace, check with them on recommendations to help avoid duplicate meta descriptions.
8.Backlinks build authority
Writing guests posts or having links from other relevant content is really helpful to you in business. Google and other search engines look on this favourably, especially if you have a back link from a government site, educational institution or reputable media platform.
Think about who you can approach to write a guest blog post for, or if there is a reputable link you’d like, strategise how you can get featured.
9.Don’t forget to SEO your images
This can be another missed opportunity that limits your business, products and service offerings being found online.
If you have ever typed in 123456.jpg into Google, you will understand why it’s important to name both your image files correctly, and also write descriptions for your images in their alt text.
If you are in the business of selling products, this can really help online sales, as customers will quite often click on the image or shopping tab when they are on the hunt for that next pair of shoes, or Christmas gift.
If you are service based, images that have been SEO’d are still important. Once again, keep things simple, and stick with keywords that relate to your offering, and are relevant to the picture.
10.Ensure Google Analytics is set up correctly
All of the above tips are great, however you do want to ensure that you can look at data to see what is working well for you from an SEO perspective, and what needs to be improved. It’s ideal to have Google analytic set up first so you can set your goals up and really track your performance.
What’s more, it will help you should you decide to implement a paid search campaign, or other cost per click campaign available with Google Ads.
Where to next with your SEO?
Implementing these tips will help set you up for success with your website locally and anywhere else your customers are.
The more you can be consistent and have a plan that is well resourced to implement any improvement opportunities, the better, so from here, think about which of the above tips will give you a quick win, and focus on implementing that one first.