One of our London-based clients called us recently to explain how some SEO work we had done on his website helped secure an order for over £30,000!
So this week we thought we’d explain a little more about SEO and how you should think about approaching it for your business and website.
Manage your own expectations
Firstly, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is really a mid to long term strategy and you should not expect instant results.
Many people make the mistake of thinking they will see an immediate return and this isn’t always the case. Having said that, as you make updates to your site you should see these reflected in search engine results fairly soon.
Remember that the whole point of SEO is so that you will rank well in search engines for certain keywords. You want customers to be able to find you in search engines so you can get more business!
Start off with your keywords
Think about what search terms you want to be found for – your keywords. Build a list of keywords which reflect what your customers will be typing into search engines.
Sometimes what you think customers are searching for, and what they are really searching for can be quite different. There are a number of tools which help you find keywords such as the Keyword Planner Tool.
Pick the keywords your customers are typing
The number of keywords depends on yourself but don’t choose too many unless your site is very big (we will come onto this later). Remember, the more keywords you pick the more work your SEO team will have to do and that will result in you being charged more.
More content is good for SEO
A bigger site with more pages, products or posts will mean there is more content and more places for your keywords. A small site with 3 pages and very little content will struggle to rank well so you need to ensure this is taken into account.
If you can, it’s worth investing in a website which you can update and grow over time, either by adding content to it or changing content easily.
If you have an ecommerce site then spending time on SEO for your products is a great way of helping customers find you in search engines. Again, think about your keywords but don’t try to have too many keywords stuffed into one page.
Better content is good for SEO
It’s not just about stuffing as many keywords as you can onto a page. These days search engines are meant to be smarter and can penalise you for using the wrong SEO techniques.
A good rule of thumb is to write good content which people will actually want to read AND which accurately reflect the keywords you are promoting. You can either write this content yourself or your SEO team can do this.
Content writing and blogging is a very useful strategy and can help your website and business grow in a natural, organic way. Writing good blog posts can also show your customers that you care about your online presence, gives them something to read and share with others, and offers more content to be indexed by search engines.
Is building backlinks worth it?
Backlinks are links from other websites to yours and apparently are a great way to improve your search engine rankings. However, building backlinks is very time consuming and difficult.
The various companies we have worked in the past who claimed to build backlinks hardly every fulfilled their promises and often got links from irrelevant or random websites.
If you are going to build backlinks they should be from relevant businesses and pages which rank well themselves. Pasting your website address into social media comments or on business forums won’t help at all.
If you want to get more backlinks then it is a costly strategy and so you need to work closely with your SEO team so you understand exactly how they will add links and where from.
How often do you need to do SEO?
There is no hard and fast rule, most companies offer monthly packages but how long you run with them is up to you. What we have found is that if you try SEO for a few months at least, then if all else is ok you should start to see some turnaround.
If you don’t see any change after doing SEO it could mean either you need more content on your website or you are in a very competitive industry where you need to up your game even more.
At StudioRav we can help you get started with various SEO options on your site and work with you to develop and maintain your website so you get found in search engine results more often. Contact us here to get started.