Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
SEO What Is It and Why It’s Important for My Website
Show Notes
Last week when I was a “guest speaker, we touched on SEO. I have had a few requests to explain further about SEO, Search Engine Optimisation. What is it and why is SEO important for your website. So today, let’s talk about SEO.
In eposide #017, we spoke to David Pagotto, an SEO specialist. David told us that the SEO philosophy is to have your business ranked as high as you can organically on Google. David said there are 3 things that drive your SEO results.
Architecture – the way your website is built correct heading, tags and structure.
Content – the information you are putting on your website
Link building – the votes that other business give you in Google eyes by linking back to your website. Quality matters.
How to Get Found on Google
In episode #032, we spoke about to get found on Google.
You need to put your audience first. It is no point having the most wonderful website if your audience doesn’t understand what you are talking about. If your messaging doesn’t solve your audiences pinpoint and peak to them directly, your time and money will be wasted.
Google really needs your website to be compliant so make sure it is mobile friendly, such a simple thing but many website still are not mobile responsive.
SEO is quite a complex system which involves many factors both on your websites which is referred to as On Page SEO and external factors which is Off Page SEO.
On Page SEO
All SEO starts with your website. Google is not going to rank you well if you haven’t followed the basic requirement on your website:
Things like:
- Contact details
- Contact page & Home Page Tabs
- Correct Heading Protocols – Only 1 Heading 1 Tag (H1)
- Clear Page Structure
- Keyword and Supporting Text
- Alternative Tags on all Images
- Reasonable Loading Speed
- Content – so Google knows what your pages are about
Customer Focused
Ranking organically is wonderful however, if you are not customer focused and solving their problems, all your hard work will be undone very quickly. If your potential audience is confused or unsure of your offering, they will bounce back out hitting that back button very quickly. A high bounce rate is not what Google wants as they see it as a negative, that you are not helping their customers (the searchers) to get what they are looking for and will start to give your opposition more share of the traffic.
“If you are confused, you lose!” Donald Miller Story Brand
Off Page SEO
Organic SEO consist of hundreds of different factors and as discussed above, it all starts with your website. Let’s not talk about some of the other factors.
Bounce rate is a big factor but what else?
Links to Your Website
Google wants to know that you are who you say you are (on your website) and that you are a good fit to send their traffic too. Back links are a good way to get this industry proof. Links for links sake what helps you and in some cases, will actually harm your rankings so don’t just go out and buy 5000 links.
Link building must be done slowly and methodically. Google wants to know that you are getting your links naturally and not being spammy. Start with any associations that you belong to. Networking clubs, industry directories, like business people you would normally refer or be partners with.
Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links are where you add a link to my website and then I add a link back to your website. There has been a lot of talk over the years about whether this is a good strategy or not. Like anything, it all boils down to whether this would happen in real life , is it a natural thing to do and does it help your audience? If you can say yes to the above questions, and the site you are linking too is a quality website with good authority, then yes, do it.
If not, then don’t. Reciprocal links as your only strategy is not a good idea. Think about how you are placing them too, a whole list of link is not the way to go. If you are writing a blog post and discussing a particular topic and can link to an article from your local accountant discussing the subject then that is a natural link. If the accountant does the same and links back to a different article of yours then even though you are both linking to each other, there is a purpose and you are helping your audience.
Link Exchanges
Link exchanges are organized reciprocal links. Depending on how it’s done, depends on whether this is a good thing to do or not. Remember links for link sake is not a good strategy.
Back linking needs to be a part of your SEO strategy, not all of your strategy.
Traffic
Google likes traffic so the more traffic you have, the more traffic they will send you. Traffic can be a chicken and the egg kind of scenario. You need traffic to get traffic so how do you get the traffic?
Paid ads driving traffic to a specific pages on your website can be useful especially if your domain is really new.
Guest blogging writing industry related articles for websites that have more authority than yours where you can add a link to your website at the bottom of the article. As always, remember to add value and not be spammy or salesy – this is not the place to be salesy.
Offline Traffic Drivers
Add your website address to your offline assets as well.
- Your business cards
- Your car
- Your building signage
- Any ads you do
- Email signage
Partnerships
One of the best ways to get traffic to your website is by using partnerships. Think about who has the same audience as you but doesn’t offer the same services. Does your local sporting club/school/business association have your audience?
Do they have a regular newsletter?
Can you sponsor them/run an ad/donate products or services?
There are many ways to have partnerships that can be win/win for all parties.
The biggest thing to remember is, are you helping your audience. Is the activity you are doing in the best interest of your customers?
What not to do for SEO
A word of warning, be very careful of the SEO offers that flood your inbox and the spam telemarketing call you get offering quick fixes or don’t pay unless we get results. These promises are often do result in a quick fix however the penalties that come with them from being associated in the wrong neighbourhood can take years to reverse and in some cases, never we put right.
SEO Is a long, slow game that done right will continue to perform for years. If it is too good to be true, then it is probably is to be aware. Google is very unforgiving of websites that try to scam their customers.
If you would like more information on some of the famous Google crackdowns, got to Moz (moz.com/learn/seo/google-hummingbird) to read more about penguin, panda, hummingbird, rank brain and pigeon.
No, we are not talking about cute animals and birds; these are the algorithms changes that wiped out people’s Google rankings overnight. A lot of the websites affected by these crack downs didn’t even know they were doing anything wrong and had just caught up in the wrong neighbourhood. Others of course were the instigators and “farming” the system.
SEO for Now
Stay up to date with SEO best practices as they are very date critical. Keyword stuffing was all the rage in 2013. Now it will get your website shut down.
Keyword stuffing is where you add to many keywords into your text in the hope of ranking well in Google. Generally, it makes the text hard to read and doesn’t give for a very good use experience.
As you can see, there are lots of different factors to SEO on your website and we have only just scratched the service. Try a few of these suggestions out and see how you go.
We have listed some extra resources for you at smallbusinesstalk.com.au/080
Links
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Why it is Important for Your Business Website
Is Your Business A Secret? Is Your Website Heading For The Google Grave Yard?
6 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
4 Mistakes That Will Cause Your Website to Underperform
3 Easy Ways to Create Unique Content That Your Audience Want to Read
5 Best Practices for Local Business SEO
SEO What Is It and Why It’s Important for My Website
Listen to Small Business Talk Episode 080 for the full episode.
