Do you have a website? If so, you will want to give potential buyers, clients, or readers the best chance of finding your beautifully written pages.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of adapting your website to ensure your target audience can find you in their searches. The chances are, they are already looking for you!
The best place to start is on your pages. Relevant, informative and well written content is the first step to making your website searchable.
Here are some other easy tips you can implement right now to boost your SEO and put your page on the map:
1) Know what your audience is searching for
It may sound obvious, but knowing what your audience searching for is the first step to ensuring they can find you. The great news is you probably have a good idea already.
If your business delivers milk in Liverpool, you may assume most people search for ‘milk delivery in Liverpool’.
Inputting this term into one of the internet’s many free keyword tools will show you that people have also searched for ‘fresh milk delivery Liverpool’ or ‘milk-man Liverpool’.
These are keywords or key phrases, and if enough people search these terms they are useful to include on your website.
Make a list of topics relevant to your business and follow the same process to find out what your customers are searching for. This will give you a good idea of what to write up for future content.
TIP: When selecting your keywords, pay attention to ‘search volume’. If a term has millions of searches you are going to have a lot of competition from much bigger pages, so select keywords with about 100 – 1000 searches per month for success!
2) Choose good images and set alt text.
Search engines prioritise pages with quality imagery, so select a clear, relevant images that abide by the rule of thirds.
Your website will allow you to attach ‘alt text’ to each image. Alt text (alternative text) is a description you can add to each image which tells users what the image shows. It improves accessibility and is read aloud by screen reader software.
An effective alt tag should be a clear short description of what the image shows, if possible including a keyword or similar key phrase. If your image is relevant this should be easy.
3) Link to other pages in your text
Include internal links to related web pages that are already on your website. This will help users navigate your website & give your other pages authority.
When relevant you should also include external links on your web pages to other useful, high quality pages. This shows search engines that you want to inform your user and associates you with other pieces of quality content.
Implementing these tips on your new and existing pages will boost your searchability and allow you to scoop up people who want what you are offering.
These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO. For more in-depth training we recommend our online course A Beginners Guide to SEO.
If you live in the Liverpool City Region (Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley, Wirral, St Helens, or Halton) or Greater Manchester, you can get a fully-funded ticket, and you are eligible for 12 plus hours of business support via the Enterprise Hub programme.
Get in touch today via enterprisehub@thewo.org.uk, or call 0151 706 8113.
