An introduction to SEO
First, a brief background to how search engines work (Already a pro? Skip it). When someone searches using a search engine (e.g. Google or Bing), it will return a list of results ranked in order of relevance. Depending on what people search for, your website will have a different relevance and therefore a different ranking. This basically means how your website compares to all other websites. For example, if someone searches for “cheese shop”, a website selling motorcycles will have a ranking down in the billions, or more likely no ranking at all. However, if someone searches for “motorbike”, it will probably have a ranking in the hundreds or thousands. This is because of a number of factors, not least (in no particular order):
The URL of the website
The website name and information as specified in meta tags (more on this later)
The content of the site
Search engines have software (affectionately known as bots) that will “crawl” (read) your website and decipher all this information and more so that you can be ranked against others and returned in results. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is just that - optimising your website so that search engines can accurately and easily read and decipher your content, and therefore see how relevant you are to any given search phrase. However, there are so many websites competing these days that to get to the top of the list, or even get your website onto the first page of Google, you have to make sure your content is not only optimised for search engines, but also tailored to them, and including hidden meta and micro-data which describe the type of information your site contains.
Confused already? I am! And to top it all off, for different searches you will have a different ranking. Even with the exact same search term, a different person might have other factors which rank you lower or higher in their result. These can vary from location to search history and many more things. So it’s a moving target! And the search engines don’t tend to publish data about your ranking, as such, and they don’t explicitly publish what their bots are looking for in order to determine your ranking. So there is a lot of educated guess work going on. We will discuss all this a bit more in the rest of the article.That said, there are some tried and tested methods you can enact to improve your website’s visibility. Largely, these are just about giving the google-bots more information about your website, so that they can make better decisions about how relevant you are to any given search. The general idea is to increase what you say and how you say it, whilst staying true to what your business is about. Then, in that particular field, your search engine ranking will rise.Ok, SEO lesson over! Here are 19 things you can do to improve your online presence.
How to Improve Your Online Presence with SEO
1. Decide on your keywords
Keywords are a number of words or word combinations that you think people might use to search for your business. These are one of the most important things to spend time working out at the very beginning, because all your subsequent activities will be informed by the keywords you choose.Once you have a list of keywords, you should also work out which are the most important and set these above the rest. You should also work out derivations of your keywords, such as alternative words or phrases that mean the same thing and that others might search for.It is important not just to pick words that you think describe your business – you need to think about how your customers would look for you. I ran an SEO campaign for a paragliding company in the UK – Mile High Paragliding – not too long ago. Their keywords were all focused around “paragliding”, but actually most of their customers had never heard of paragliding before. I worked with them to do some research and the list of keywords we ended up included things like “flight experience” and “adventure sport”. Try to step outside your industry and look back in. If you find this difficult to do ask a friend or family member unrelated to the business. You can even ask customers what they think you do.If you can get the keywords right in the first place, this will help you enormously. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how SEO-ed you are, if you are optimised for the wrong keywords then your customers won't find you anyway.Once you have your list locked down, it’s a good idea to keep it somewhere prominent, especially when you are creating content for your website. Paste it into the bottom of every document before you start writing or print it off and stick it on the wall. However you do it, make sure you refer to it frequently as this will help you to automatically add those words and phrases to your content without really having to think about it too much.My final point on keywords is to revise them at frequent intervals. Over time, new phrases may appear in your industry, your research and search stats may turn up new ideas, you may start offering new products, or you may just think of new words and phrases. It's ok to change your keywords to make them more relevant, moreover it is important that you do.
2. Make your titles relevant
In your headlines and site title, make sure every word is relevant in order of importance. Look back at those keywords and make sure the ones you marked as the most important are included. Your site name appears in the browser tab and is the first thing that search engines will see after your URL. Make sure you check each of the words to make sure they provide the best description of your service, and make sure the site title includes the most accurate search phrase(s) that people would use to look for you.
3. Use your keywords in your content
Now you have your keywords and they are in your site title and main headlines, it is time to get them into your existing content as much as possible (without obviously damaging its message!). For example, for a site like this one, you could use the term “front-end development services” instead of “our services”, or change “we now have renowned customers worldwide” to “we provide front-end development services to renowned customers worldwide”.
4. Meta tags explained
In the code of your website there is some HTML content known as meta tags. These specify some information about your website to other websites that reference it, most notably, search engines and social media platforms. Meta tags will help social media display your website if it gets shared. For example, if someone shares your page on Facebook, it will pick up the main image and page title etc. from your meta tags.If your site is quite simple, Facebook will already do a pretty good job. However, it is a good idea to make sure your meta tag content is populated anyway, as it will give you fuller control over what they show. If this content is not populated, then the preview that you see will change if Facebook’s algorithm for deciphering content changes. Whereas having it explicitly set in the meta tags would mean you have full control regardless of what Facebook do with their algorithms.The tags will also be important to search engines, as they will help it to understand the content on your site. For search engines, you should add things like a list of keywords and a site description at the least. This is all completely invisible to customers but is read and interpreted by search engines when analysing your site.
5. More content equals more keywords
Other than the things mentioned above, search engines really only have the content on your site to go by when deciding your ranking. The more (relevant) content you can show them the better, and the more times you repeat those keywords in said content the even betterer. For example:
Add a few more sections to different pages if you can – headings can be important to signpost the general content of a page both to customers and search engines, so breaking up large blocks of text with nice bold headings is a good thing to do overall.
Add customer case-studies, reviews or testimonials (if relevant) – as well as being a great way to demonstrate your history and capabilities, this is a great way to increase the content on your website and get more of those precious keywords in there!
6. Add new content regularly
Another thing that search engines use to rank websites is how recently the site was updated with new content. This is why so many websites now have a blog section. Not only does it increase content overall and allow you to include and repeat more of your keywords, it also displays to the search engine that you are an active, current website with up to date information on it. This will pull your ranking above others who are not showing this. Adding a blog can be a daunting thought, but the articles would not have to be long or even very interesting. You don’t necessarily need them to be customer-focused, although if they can be, all the better. It’s more about making sure you get SEO-relevant content up every week or even every month. Even once a year would help put you above someone who is not doing anything.
7. Include alt-attributes on image elements
alt attributes are part of the HTML code that makes up your website. They tell the browser some text to show if it cannot download the image (usually due to poor internet connection), but more importantly they are the only thing that a search engine will see (in terms of images) as the google-bots and the like cannot interpret images very well.
8. Get on the Google search console
Google will actually show you how your website is performing and what people are searching for to find you, all for free. You can set up a free google account (or use an existing one) by heading over to search.google.com. Here you can register your website and then wait a few days for the data to start accumulating. When you get into the account for your website, you can also submit a sitemap. This will allow google to better understand your website so that it connects all the pages together correctly. It is worth doing so that you can see that all your pages are found correctly.
9. Create a sitemap
Talking of sitemaps, you should publish a sitemap! It doesn’t have to be linked to on your home page or anything as your customers don’t need to see it. But it can just sit as a separate page on your website. The URL to this page is what you will provide to Google in the previous point.
10. Install Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that you can easily add to your website. You can search for it and set up a free account and then link it to your website with the instructions they provide. If you don't have access to the code, check the tool or CMS that you use to create and manage your website - very often they have a means of adding Google Analytics very easily. This will then allow you to see detailed demographics of who is coming into your site, how long they spend there, and where they come from. It also allows you to track how effective any marketing campaigns are in the future as you can see if someone clicked from an ad or just through organic search (meaning the normal free listing on google instead of a paid search listing).
11. Get listed on other websites
The SEO robots essentially work by following links all day and night. The more times they stumble on a website, the higher they will rank it. In other words, the more times you are linked to on other websites, the better! Can you get listed on your customers’ websites as a provider? Are there any external bloggers that you can ask (or pay) to write an article about you? Can you get listed on websites relevant to your industry? Can you get on trust pilot or something equivalent for your industry?
12. Make sure your website is mobile friendly
More than 50% of people are searching for content on their phones these days, and search engines check your site for mobile compatibility before serving up your website in search results on a mobile device.
13. Use semantic HTML code
The HTML code you use to create your website is also important, although many sites do not have a choice here if they are built using a website-builder tool or CMS. If this applies to you, factor this into any choices you have to make about your website provider. However, if you or someone on your team does have access to the code of your website, make sure you are using semantic HTML. This means that the code you use describes what it represents.HTML5 brought about a whole bunch of new elements or “tags” that we can use to code our HTML pages. Instead of sticking to div elements all the time, we can now use section or article elements where relevant. Content that is not directly related to the main body of the page can be in an aside element. The navigation bar can be in a nav element. These are just a few, but if you are not familiar and have access to the code of your site, making your HTML semantic might just give your search rankings the boost you need. The full list is best looked up on the WW3 Schools website for reference.
14. Do some competitor research
It is worth noting that, as your ranking is primarily a comparison to other websites, it can go up and down based on the activity of competitors, not just on your own website. For example, if they start doing one of the points I mention in this article that you are not doing, then they might increase their ranking above yours, thereby decreasing your ranking. So it helps to be aware of what your competitors are doing so that you can stay ahead of them, or at least keep up.It is also quite useful to look at what your competitors are doing and take inspiration. A quick google of your own keywords will show you which websites currently come out on top. Look for the ones that don’t have the “Ad” symbol in their entry (as those guys have paid to be at the top - more on this next), then go to their websites and see what they are doing that you are not. Also, go down the list a few pages and see what some of the lower-ranked websites are doing; is there anything there that looks like it might be pulling them down the list, and can you avoid/stop doing these things on your own website? Can you find your own website in the listing? Then you can see how far down you are, how your position changes for different search terms, and over time watch how your position moves as you implement various changes.
15. PPC Advertising
If all that SEO stuff sounds like a lot of work, you can always just pay to be at the top of the list! This is called PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising and can be done on a very low budget if you are doing it yourself. You can essentially say that you want to spend a maximum amount each day/week/month. This can be as little as you want, but (logically!) the smaller your budget the smaller your visibility. The way PPC works is like this (I will take google as an example):
A person searches for a term which you have included in your advert’s inclusions (you can include loads of terms or get google to do it for you).
In that moment, google runs through all the adverts it has available which meet the search criteria and gets each one to bid until it reaches the highest bidder (usually pennies!). You can set the maximum amount you want your advert to bid.
If you are the highest bidder, your ad will get shown.
If the person searching clicks on your advert then you will be charged the amount of the bid. If they don’t click, you don’t get charged anything.
The bidding process is complicated behind the scenes, but you don’t really need to understand the full details of it, just that you would never be charged more than your maximum bid for one click, and you wouldn’t be charged more than your daily limit overall. So, for example, if you set your daily limit at £5, and your maximum bid at 50p, then you could in theory have 10 clicks per day. Your ad might get shown more times than this, but as you only get charged for a click it wouldn’t affect your budget. Bear in mind what others might also be bidding as well though. If you have a big competitor bidding a max of £20 with a daily limit of £1000, you will rarely get displayed above them as they will always out bid you. However, you might find that at the end of a day you win some bids against them because they have reached their daily limit. As you can see there is a lot to consider with budget setting. So it is really worth thinking about your goals before you fork out any money, and also setting aside some budget to just practise and see what the market saturation is like – e.g. a test to see if you get any clicks with a 50p max bid; if you only get a few, try raising it to 70p, then 90p, etc.
16. Use Social Media (organically)
If you haven’t done so already, you should set up business accounts for yourself on the major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn…). There you can link to yourself, thereby providing a link back to your website for the google-bots to follow, but also it will provide another place where you can advertise and try to get your name out.Most social media platforms offer advertising options, but you can also try and get yourself shared organically (i.e. for free), generally in one of these 2 ways:
Have friends and family share your content and get lucky that it gets shared enough times and to the right people that you get some customers from it.
Create and share a piece of content that goes viral (meaning it is hyper-engaging and so gets shared and seen by lots of people). Most effective for this is a video, but these can be expensive to create in the first place. Also, a certain element of luck to it (Four Seasons Landscaping comes to mind).
To create shareable content can be quite a challenge. However, often the best stuff is a human story, which might tie in with the points above about writing some case studies or blogs. These are usually where the most shareable content will come from.
17. Use Social Media (non-organically)
Outside of these “organic” options, there are PPC and PPV (Pay Per View) options. These are set up in a similar way to the google PPC I discussed above, but as the people viewing your adverts are logged in users, here the website has a lot of information about them so you can be quite specific with who you want to show the advert to. I won’t go into too much more detail here as I have already outlined the basics above and the extra demographic data on social media platforms makes them a little too complicated to explain here, but if you are interested there are some very good YouTube videos and blogs giving a step by step breakdown of what to do, and maybe I will delve into it a little more in a future article.
18. Direct Marketing
Ok, this doesn't strictly fall into the category of 'online' marketing. But if all this online stuff is too much, good old-fashioned direct marketing does still work! With all the new options available, people often forget it, but getting in touch with businesses and customers directly and getting your name in front of them is very effective. There is a lot of research to say that online marketing is so prevalent now that people are switched off to it. And sometimes, a phone call or a visit is a welcome change that will set you apart from your competition.
19. Microdata
There is one final point I wanted to touch on, and that is microdata, also known as “structure data”. As this is a very complex topic, I feel it requires a whole article of its own, but I will give you a brief idea of what it is.If you have ever seen search results that include a star rating, a list of links, a numbered list of items, or anything else out of the ordinary, this is usually specified using microdata. It is a way of marking up your HTML code to indicate to a search engine that a certain piece of content on your page conforms to one of their predefined options and can be pulled out to enrich your search results entry.In addition, this will give your search ranking a small boost. Not only does it allow your content to be better understood by the bots but also puts you ahead of competitors who are not using microdata.However, the main benefit still remains to make your listing look more eye catching and differentiate you from the other results. With this in mind – whilst important – microdata really is the last thing you should implement after everything else here, as it is time consuming, difficult to get right, and is pointless if your website is coming up as number 3000 in the list of results anyway.
Final thoughts
There is a lot of information here, and not all of it will be relevant to every business. I have tried to keep things broad to cover as many situations as possible. However, if it all sounds a little overwhelming, or you just don’t have time to put these tips into action, do get in touch. Here at A&A Agency, we provide most of the online services mentioned above and will be happy to provide you with a quote that matches your requirements.Thanks for making it to the end!