Marketing your business effectively will involve many different techniques, from content to social media, printed marketing materials to networking.
For the majority of businesses, their website will form a significant part of their marketing strategy, with SEO taking a crucial role in getting the website seen by a target audience.
The phrase, search engine optimisation, has the ability to strike fear in the heart of many due to its complexity. With speed, responsiveness, on-page, off-page, algorithm changes, being just a few considerations that work towards boosting your search engine rankings, implementing an SEO strategy can seem daunting.
Contrary to what people may think, you don’t have to be an expert coder to get started with SEO, there are a number of simple yet effective techniques you can carry out that will give you the ideal start.
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Utilise Google My Business
Particularly for those looking to reach prospective customers in the local area, Google My Business can be an effective and free tool to get your business seen on Google for the business category it operates in. You may have noticed these listings on the right-hand side of Google searches.
Start by claiming your business address then verifying and completing your profile (i.e. opening hours, description, images, categories and contact information). After you have verified your listing, you can begin to share posts on the platform, events and reply to reviews.
Update your title tags and meta descriptions
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There are many different plugins you can add to your website that will allow you to easily add your own title tags and meta descriptions (these are the headlines and descriptions you see on Google search results). Yoast is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress websites. On here you can add a focus keyword, your title (be sure to include your company name) and your meta description. Once complete, Yoast will give you an overall score for your page on how well it represents your keyword.
Add alt tags
Most website content management systems will have an option for you to add an alt tag to your images when adding them (although for more bespoke sites you may need a web developer). As search engines are unable to physically see an image, an alt tag provides a concise description, that allows the search engines to gain a clearer picture of your web page’s subject matter and index it accordingly.
Update your content regularly
Search engines love to see websites being regularly updated with quality content. Therefore, a content marketing plan should play a crucial part in your SEO strategy. First and foremost, you need to consider your audience and the tone you want to convey. When it comes to generating ideas, industry news, frequently asked questions and discussions about your customers’ ‘pain points’ are a great place to start.
Whilst the tips outlined above are just a few of many different techniques you could incorporate into your overall SEO strategy, they will give it that much-needed boost to get you started.