A short time ago an associate suggested that I wrote an article regarding the challenges that new business owners face when they try to gain more exposure online. Hence this article today where I share some simple SEO tips that all business owners can use and implement.
If your website is un-optimised you really are at a disadvantage. If your website does not generate natural traffic then you are purely relying on brand awareness, which is ok to an extent although you will never become a wealthy business owner. Most industries are filled with competitors and it’s those that invest into SEO that reap the rewards.
Rather than dedicating all of your time to understand how search engine optimisation works, you have two choices; either invest in an affordable search engine optimisation package or implement some simple techniques yourself.
Below I have listed a few areas that all business owners can get involved in. Please bear in mind that SEO is not a fast track route to success. It’s a slog, it takes time and only the fittest achieve the top rankings. A successful SEO campaign could take anything from a few months to a matter of years to gain top search engine rankings.
Page Title Optimisation
The first thing you should do, if you haven’t done it already is assign meta titles to all of your websites pages. This tells search engines what your page is all about.
Any SEO expert worth investing into will tell you that it’s essential to target keywords that will generate quality traffic. To identify these you can use your own knowledge, to ensure that those terms generate traffic use the Google Keyword tool.
It’s always best to target long tail keywords. I.e the keyword “Web Design” would be classed as a low to medium length keyword / key-phrase and it will be exceptionally competitive to rank for, whereas a more relevant search term such as “Web Design Colchester” is likely to generate far more qualified traffic to my website.
Link Building
Most website owners have probably listened to SEO gurus and web designers talk about ‘link building’, however most glorify what this actually means. In simple terms a ‘link’ is a ‘hyperlink’ that links either text or an image from another web page to your website.
Nowadays you need to be smart about how you go about link building activities. It used to be the case that the more links you had the better. Since Google’s algorithmic developments, this is no longer the case.
In short, Google now detects and penalises “unnatural” link building activities. This can include overused anchor text, paid links and irrelevant websites linking to you. Quite simply avoid these pitfalls.
A great way to instantly understand the value of a link is by following this theory; “The easier it is to obtain a link, the less valuable it’s likely to be” – Danny Nevill.
Without getting overwhelmed with link building, on the whole it’s very important to build links, but you must build quality links as well as a few less effective links. This creates what is known as a natural link profile.
In case it’s still un-apparent how a link is relative to SEO. Consider a link as a vote of confidence from other websites. In essence, if you want; “a web designer in Colchester” and 1,000 relevant websites link to Universal Web Design whereas a competitor has 100 links, it’s likely that Universal Web Design will rank above the other. A great test to identify whether link building still works, simply search for “click here” in Google. As you can see Adobe rank top. This is because thousands of websites have linked to that page using the anchor text “click here”. As you can see on the Adobe web page at no point does it display the term “click here” this proves how powerful quality link building truly is.
Obsess With Content
Indulge yourself with creating high quality content. You should regularly write blog posts for other bloggers websites as well as your own. Once you do this for a few months you will certainly see a slow but steady increase in your websites ranking.
In the past you could write a load of gibberish stuffed full of keywords and link those terms to your website. This poor quality link building technique no longer works. In the modern world of SEO you need to create lot’s of good quality content on a regular basis that either; helps or entertains people. By doing this you will build natural links from those that benefited. In addition people are likely to share and promote your content if it’s good. This in it’s own right is free advertising. Furthermore the search engines track social media activity and this is another SEO metric that search engines use to rank a website.
Business owners are always daunted by the prospect of creating new content each week, however it’s really not that difficult. Just set 2 hours aside each week. You may struggle to decide on topics, to counter this issue, simply think of a recent happenings within your business and write about it. Many business owners are unaware that they’re actually a master within their own industry and how valuable their knowledge is. In essence, create quality content and you will be rewarded.
Summary
I hope that these simple SEO tips help you understand the importance of search engine optimisation and how all business owners can do their own bit in improving their websites ranking. P.s. Don’t forget to share this article if you enjoyed it!