In this week's episode of Through the marketing lens, I dove in and discussed SEO strategies and why you need to implement them into your business. If you didn't know SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
It's a really important part of your marketing strategy and I'm going to walk you through 5 different components you need to know that you can do for your SEO to help your business growth.
Well, let's dive in...
First, let's go over what really is SEO. It means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility, the more attention you're going to get, the more prospects you're going to get.
We want to make sure that you're getting as much attention as you can. We don't want someone who liked your business not to be able to find your business when they can't think of your business name. Search engines are a really big way for that to happen.
Typically people are searching for things when they are ready to buy.
A good example of this:
You're an ice cream shop located in West Palm Beach, Florida. When someone in Palm Beach is searching for "local ice cream shops", you need yours to come up as high as possible in those rankings because no one is going to look through several pages to find you.
Essentially, we want to make sure you're showing up for your ideal client where they are searching in any way possible.
How does SEO work?
It works through search engines like Google and we use Google as that example because that's what's popular and what most people use. It uses bots to crawl across pages all over the internet collecting information about the pages and what content is on those pages and places them in an index. Then they take into account hundreds of different ranking factors or signals from the bots to determine the order the pages come in depending on what people are searching.
So when people are searching for a company like yours they don't likely have your company's name so there putting in what there looking for such as a business coach, ice cream shop, branding expert, etc. You want your potential client or customer to do a little amount of work to find you.
This is big for small businesses because you can put in the work and effort and know what you're doing is going to pay off for your business.
I'm going to give you the basics that you can actually implement into your SEO for your business and these aren't crazy level advanced strategies but stuff that small business owners can implement now to drive an optimal level of traffic to your sites.
Now let's go over these 5 strategies:
#1 Mobile friendly
All 5 of these are important but this is the one you need to make sure you do first. You need to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Most people are using their phones to do everything so most likely when someone is searching for something it's on their phone. We want to make sure that if someone finds your website that it looks right on their device. A common missed thing when people design their site is to look at what it shows on mobile. You can easily do this by searching your domain on your phone on google and see what it shows. It might come up and say your site isn't mobile-friendly or it might not show the important things from your website.
How To Fix It:
You might need to change the template that you're using if it's not mobile-friendly.
Check that videos and photos on your site aren't too big or you risk your site not loading efficiently.
#2 Keywords
Keywords are a really big deal. Keywords matter because this is how people physically look for a company like yours and how there going to find you. An example would be if someone is looking for a branding expert but they might not know what to call it or how the industry works which is why they want help. They might use different words and fun fact the top words used when looking for a brand expert was actually brand consultants, branding consultants, brand strategy consultant, and personal branding consultant as the top four.
That means you need to have a lot of keywords someone might use when trying to find someone like you in various places on your website. You want to create signals for those bots to find therefore if you have those keywords several times in different places it's going to help those bots. You do need to be strategic about it, the more words showing up the better...BUT...those robots are smart and you want to do it with purpose so you don't get Google blackballed if you will for trying to cheat the system.
If you keep at it consistently and it won't happen overnight but be patient and it's worth your time to pay attention to your keywords.
I have a site I like to use to help with this and they even have a great free option!
Its https://moz.com/
You get free keywords to play with monthly and you can use it to figure out words to implement in your business and try out!
Where To Put Them:
In your copy
Product descriptions
Photo tags or descriptions
Blogs
Anywhere you can put tags or makes sense
#3 Building Credibility
We want to build a trust factor with search engines. We want them to know where people and have a legitimate business and not a scam. The biggest most effective at of creating authority is getting backlinks. What it means is to get linked back from different websites back to yours which is essentially vouching for you. So if something like Yahoo Finance linked back to your website then that would be a big indicator to the bots that you're a credible business. It doesn't have to be crazy big sites you can find smaller ways as well. It's not easy to get backlinks and you have to do it consistently.
Ways To Get Backlinks:
Blogs
Local online newspapers
PR
Podcasts
Testimonials
#4 Blogs
Something I get asked a lot is blogging worth your time? In short, blogging is absolutely worth your time. Most people are skimming blogs at this point but some do still read them. It's really great for SEO. Your blog is essentially your own piece of the internet and potentially really helpful for those looking for a bit of knowledge. Unlike social media blogging doesn't go away in 24 hours so it's a great way to integrate keywords we were just talking about. Make sure you create really good content that you can repurpose over and over again. The catch is you have to be consistent and add value. Don't do it if you can't commit to it, only posting a few won't be worth your time.
Ways To Get Traction:
Post value
Give lots of content
Consistent
keywords in the back end
Give 90 days to see results
#5 Update Your Website
Another big tip and worth your time is to update your website regularly so you can freshen things up. Think of it as spring cleaning. You want Google to know your still relevant by getting rid of old pages and edit current ones. It's not something you have to do every week or month but when it feels comfortable like maybe quarterly, just make sure you find the time.
Ways To Update Your Site
Changing pictures
Updating info
Delete old non-relevant pages
I know it might seem like a lot but SEO is totally doable. If you're interested in hearing more, I HIGHLY recommend episode 24 of Through The Marketing Lens podcast, where I really dive into SEO strategy and what it can do for your biz.
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