We all know that as an integral part of your marketing effort, your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy, needs to be reviewed regularly to ensure your customers are able to find you. Unfortunately for small business, social enterprise (or anyone for that matter!) there is no magic bullet to guarantee your web site will appear on the first page of Google, Bing or Yahoo. Search engines are governed by complex algorithms and it takes a lot of effort to ‘convince’ them that your web site or page deserves one of the top spots.
As I was researching and writing for this post I realise just how much work I need to do to refresh my website. As someone who supports small business owners it is sometimes easier to tell what is needed rather than to do it for your own business – especially when it comes to DIY SEO. So let’s tackle this problem together in 5 steps.
One thing that hasn’t changed is that SEO starts and ends with good content, content that is relevant to your audience.
As things continue to change all the time, one of the best attitudes to take into a review is to assume you know nothing and are starting again! That means sitting down and focussing or getting some collective heads together and begin with a brainstorm.
1) Brainstorm (see here for tips to brainstorming)
- What are the problems we solve?
- Who are the communities / customers we serve – have they changed – are they changing?
- What are the issues we stand for / the services we offer?
- What do our customers want from us?
2) Organize Your Brainstorm
After brainstorming you need to organise your ideas
- Group similar ideas together
- For the key themes create a list of key words and long tail phrases that are relevant to the topics
- Get to one key word per topic, short list long tails
- Does your current website and all social media handles use these key words and phrases?
3) Research
With the revised list from step 2, review your website for:
- Information and posts – are you reflecting the topics as outlined above?
- Page Titles – do your titles reflect their content? If not revise
- Are you using page description meta tags? -Meta tags are 150 or so characters to provide a unique description for all pages, posts, products. Update these – and it’s best to avoid repeating the page title.
- Breadcrumbs – this is a new one to me! A breadcrumb is a set of links at the top of your pages that aid navigation. (There are many free plugins to assist with this). I am doing that after finishing this post!
- Internal Links – link your related articles together (2-3 max) by using keywords or the full title of the other page / post (see the link to how to brainstorm above). And don’t use ‘click here’ for internal linking (I have to review a lot of pages for that one!)
- Formatting – Use headings, BOLD and italics to draw user attention, write small paragraphs. How does it look on a smart phone / tablet?
- Images – Optimise the image size for user experience – i.e. not too slow. Use Alt Text to describe the image (you can add keywords but don’t overdo it). Do use keywords in the image filenames.
4) Review as you go
Start by focussing on the top target words and phrases. See what your analytics are telling you. Replicate what works, get rid of what does not. Measure, Measure, Measure.
Try looking at the speed of your website to ensure the use experience is enhanced. There is a free tool you can use to test the speed of your site.
5) Develop a Plan
Having fresh content is an incentive for visitors to come back and for search engine bots to visit and crawl your web site more often. Set annual, monthly daily topics and targets and lock them into your calendar. Like all components of your marketing plan SEO cannot be set and forget.
Would love to know your secrets to SEO success if you have them?!
