Mmmm, SEO - just what we need to hear to get our heart rates up, right?
Some lucky few may find this facet of running a business thrilling, or at least interesting, but to be honest, most of us don’t. To be more honest still, SEO sits at the intersection of several male-dominated industries, making it just another area female entrepreneurs may have to find their way into. It can feel overwhelming.
Yet it is an important aspect of a marketing strategy to consistently attract clients. While we cannot view SEO as set-it-and-forget-it, it does run on its own once we have it established and regular adjustments can even increase its performance. So let’s get in our millionaire mindsets and bravely tackle the first steps of SEO, which don’t have to be mystical at all.
If you’re reading this post, then you probably already know what SEO is and may already have a website crafted with a service like Wix, Kajabi or Wordpress. If you don’t have one yet, get in touch. We use Go High Level, which is an integrated All-in-1 website solution and can help you get started.
As Google enjoys a near monopoly of the market, most businesses optimise for Google’s parameters. They have a list of best practices and a suite of tools to help us. Some important items are keywords, user experience and website engagement.
Keywords
You know what these are, but how can you know which ones to focus on? Google has its own Keyword Planner tool and there are services like Semrush or Ahrefs that you can use. More importantly, once you have identified them, a great tip is to make sure they are included in your page titles and meta descriptions. Instead of putting just your cafe’s name in the page title, why not put in “Best Coffee in Seattle at Blue Giraffe Cafe”? This is such an easy adjustment to make and you can do it for each individual page on your site. Just make sure to keep the titles under 60 characters so they display fully.
The other place you can pay attention to in order to see immediate results is your meta descriptions. What are those? You know when you search and you see a small summary of the website below the link itself, explaining to you what you will get if you click on the link? That’s a meta description and you can determine what it says there about your site! Definitely include keywords and remember that Google rewards high-value content. Your keywords must be worked in organically, which is also sustainable for you, as Google won’t punish you for bad content by relegating your page to a lower ranking.
User experience
This is just what it sounds like. How does a user experience your site? Does it take a long time to load? Do you have to rotate your mobile phone to see the whole width of the page? Here are a few things you can do before you need to hire an professional. Ask people you know with various devices to look at your site. You want to see it on mobile phones, tablets and laptops and on different operating systems. If you see anything at all ,out of place then you want to fix it, because potential customers will also see it. A good no-code website platform should have a preview function and Google also has a free tool to test mobile friendliness.
Website engagement
This does not mean your website is out on the social scene… well, actually it kind of does. This has to do with how your website interacts with other digital content. Engagement can mean that you regularly update it with blog posts or special offers, that it collaborates with other sites via external links or that when you post on your socials (See? There they are!), you link back to your site and vice versa. There is really no substitute for activity here. Your CEO mindset will come in handy here as you recognise the value of just being consistent about posting, even if it is a short impulse from you to your customers. Actively pursue external links to collaborators and partners. Don’t forget to link your various socials to each other and back to your website.
A last point to think about is a sitemap. Your no-code platform should be able to provide you with a sitemap, which is basically just a blueprint of your site that makes it easier for Google’s bots to read and understand your site, resulting in higher placement and therefore more traffic. You must submit this sitemap to Google’s Search Console!
Taking care of this techie, banal side of the business isn’t what gets all of our motors running, but if we take the time to invest in a website and intend it to showcase our business and convert visitors, then it is necessary as well as useful. It is shown to increase traffic by ranking higher in the search engine results, create a better experience for the user, build brand credibility and trust and be a very cost-effective marketing tool. We’ve been where you are and would love to help you get started - or finish up - with your search engine optimisation.
This was very insightful, and I'm feeling a little lighter about the entire process already. Do you help with SEO when you do websites for your clients?