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You wrote your website all by yourself and you’re really chuffed with it.
Your Granny said, “Wonderful darling,” but you’re not convinced anyone else has seen it.
Meanwhile...
...in an office just up the road, Mr Perfect-Customer is online. He’s in a hurry. He has 5 minutes, between meetings and he’s searching for a birthday present for his wife.
People
use search engines to help them find whatever it is they’re looking for. And if Mr P-C is searching for something you
provide, you want to make damn sure he finds you…
And
then chooses you over your competitors – but that is a different blog post!
SEO is to search engines as catnip is to cats
When
someone types something into Google, it takes the words, tries to work out what
the searcher wants to find, and then returns its best and most valuable results
accordingly. In theory providing the searcher with exactly what they are after.
From
Mr P-C’s point of view, he wants to see precisely what he is looking for at the top of the list.
Remember,
Mr P-C is busy; he has to get to his meeting.
If
you don’t appear in the first few pages of search results, and your competitors
do, Mr P-C will buy from them.
Sorry.
That’s just the way it is.
In
order to have a shot at being noticed before the competition, you’ve got to
provide consistently great content, and…
You need to optimise it.
Just
like your competitors do.
So, how can you get your website to leap off the screen and smack Mr P-C round the chops?
SEO
may seem like a dark art, and indeed parts of it actually are – very few people
know the make-up of the Google algorithms for example, not to mention the fact
that they are constantly changing, but there are lots of things that SEO
experts agree you can do to increase your chances.
The
below list is not designed to turn you into an SEO expert during the ad-break
of Corrie, but to give you a flavour of the types of things that can be done to
help, and some places to go for further info.
It
might even help you feel you could have a sensible conversation about SEO
with your web designer.
1. Understand what your customers are searching for
Think about what Mr P-C will be searching for. He might type; “Buy jewellery,” or, “Buy birthday present,” or he might type something more specific like, “Buy local bespoke silver jewellery”.
These are called ‘keywords’ – even if they are actually more than one word.
There
are loads of tools available to help you find out what people are searching for. As a small business you're
better off choosing more specific keywords, as hopefully you'll be up against
fewer businesses that match these.
Play around with phrases, type some into Google, see what comes up and pick some to focus your attention on. Obviously you'll want to include terms like, “Buy jewellery,” as well, but there are so many businesses that sell jewellery, that you are unlikely to suddenly appear at the top if someone types this into Google.
Play around with phrases, type some into Google, see what comes up and pick some to focus your attention on. Obviously you'll want to include terms like, “Buy jewellery,” as well, but there are so many businesses that sell jewellery, that you are unlikely to suddenly appear at the top if someone types this into Google.
It’s about quality not
quantity. Hundreds of people looking at your site may make
you feel good, but it's pointless if they don't translate into sales.
Interestingly,
research has concluded that buyers using more specific search terms are
actually closer to a purchase, so attracting these potential customers to your
site is much more likely to result in a sale.
For
a detailed look at keyword research, including tools available to help, check
out this beginners guide to keyword research from Moz.
2. Include your keywords, but write content for your customers
Once
you’ve chosen your keywords, you need to write content that includes them.
Choose
no more than 2 or 3 of your keywords to focus on in each page.
E.g., Your home page could focus on the keywords, “Buy bespoke jewellery online,” and
“Buy jewellery Bristol,” or wherever you are based.
You'll find that if you focus on writing to Mr P-C when you write, not only
will you automatically use lots of the keywords / phrases that you came up with,
you’ll write more naturally too.
3. Put your keywords in all the right places
Review
your writing, and adjust to include your keywords in these places:
- In your title – this will appear at the top of your browser
- In headers, particularly main headers
- Early on in the first couple of paragraphs, in the last paragraph, and sprinkled throughout
- In link text – Linking to other pages within your site, or to another website
- Your ‘alt tags’ for photos – this is text you should include in case your photos don’t load properly
For
more information on where to put keywords in your website see here - I especially
like the infographic.
4. But make sure you don’t stuff it up
If
Google thinks you are purposely using too many keywords it will accuse you of
‘keyword stuffing’ and leave you alone, assuming your content is spam*2.
This spells disaster.
Make
sure your content reads naturally.
This
is what Google support says about 'keyword stuffing'.
5. Give your web developer a nice cup of tea and a scone (or some meta data)
Meta
data is all the technical bits hidden behind the scenes – kinda like the baking
powder in your scone.
This
includes clear page titles and descriptions. These should be unique for each
page within your website, and should include the specific key words that you
are choosing to focus on with that page.
You
need to remember that titles and particularly descriptions may be displayed by
the search engine, and so they must be written to entice searchers to click on
your site.
Your
web developer might also ask for a list of keywords for each page. These are
not thought to affect search engine rankings as much as they once did, but are
often included just in case.
6. Link in, link out and shake it all about
Google
loves to see that people it thinks
are important think you have
something worth saying, so ideally you want highly regarded websites to link to
your site.
Obviously
you can’t easily persuade the BBC to recommend you, but you can take advantage
of social media and guest blogging opportunities to raise the profile of your
site and create those, all important, incoming links.
Building
up your web presence organically (i.e. without paying lots of money) is a
process which, for best results, should be done at a slow and steady pace.
N.b. Unscrupulous companies
might offer you links in return for money. This is the online equivalent of a cowboy knocking on your door and offering to tarmac your drive if you give him all the cash you have under your mattress.
DO NOT. DON’T. EVER. Google will not be your friend.
DO NOT. DON’T. EVER. Google will not be your friend.
7. How can you check your site is optimised?
Unfortunately
these things take time.
It
can take anything from 1 -3 months for Google to find your website and index
it, so it is difficult to tell straight away how your website is performing.
Set
yourself up a Google webmaster account so that you can get loads of useful information about how your website is doing.
There are loads of articles giving advice on how to effectively use these tools, but I quite like this one for firefighting issues - Is the problem traffic or copywriting?
There are loads of articles giving advice on how to effectively use these tools, but I quite like this one for firefighting issues - Is the problem traffic or copywriting?
I
don't want to go into the vast array of analytical tools and testing methods in
this post - that's for another day, but if you are interested, there is a great
post here that gives advice on how to look at your website from Google's perspective.
8. But it doesn’t end there…
Website
optimisation is an ongoing process…If the information on your site becomes
stale then then your audience will have no interest in feasting on it, and if
people stop visiting it will affect where you appear in search results.
Of
course, no one is expecting you to update your home page every week, but there
are a few simple ways to make sure you keep the search engines interested:
- Start a blog and focus each post around particular keywords or things you expect your customers to be searching on
- Have a news section that is updated regularly
- Add new web pages to showcase new product types or customer case studies etc.
- When adding new pages, or content, link to it from older pages – this will help Google find it easily.
9. Google’s search engine updates changes can mean changes to the way SEO works
Google
makes regular changes to the way its search engine works, and the way it takes
information and uses it to present results.
For
example, the most recent change, called Hummingbird, is said to have made
‘tactical SEO’ more difficult because it no longer tells you which keywords
people are searching on to reach your website. It has also made it easier for
people to use 'conversational search', i.e. asking questions. This is a
response to more people searching the internet using voice commands, such as
through Siri for iPhone.
If
you are interested, keep an eye on: http://searchenginewatch.com to see what's
going on.
10. Or employ an SEO-trained copywriter to do it all for you
If
you want further info on SEO in general, this is a really useful article
offering practical tips and advice:
Terms that may confuse...
*1 Algorithms are complex equations and mathematical models – nothing to do with
excess weed growth in your pond.
*2 Spam
refers to unwanted or unwelcome commercial messages – NOT the suspect pork
product that comes in a tin with a turnkey.
If you have any comments I'd love to hear them below.
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Wondering how it all started? Read my first post: CA – Copywriters Anonymous
Follow my #copywritingjourney on Twitter: @weenixlen
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