Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a frustrating task if you do not know the ins and outs of how it works. Where you may have spent a great deal of time and money to make a great looking site with a modern layout, if the site does not have the proper SEO than it will not be seen by many people. Any business which wants to see an increase in traffic to their site is advised to use a professional for their SEO. However, this does not mean that there are not some fundamental SEO strategies that you cannot implement yourself. These strategies will get your foot in the door and help to start establishing your websites presence more successfully.

Why SEO?

SEO is based upon different strategies which search engine algorithms and other software use to identify your site. These identifiers and ranking systems are then used to calculate your importance on the web and you are then allocated a spot within the search engines. The more relevant your site is, the higher your search engine position.

To better put a point on it, consider the fact that great cities such as London or Manchester have telephone books. A business in that telephone book would be hard pressed to be noticed unless someone was specifically looking for that business. This is what a site without SEO is. However, proper SEO is like taking that business and adding a big neon sign that says “HERE I AM”. You are more apt to be seen if you are actively trying to be seen. So how can you implement SEO into your site?

Start a business blog

I have heard it said over and over that “I do not like to blog”. This may or may not be true for you. However, consider that the majority of content which is read about a company or a service is done through articles and blogs. More people access information via mobile devices than they do from magazines and newspapers. Therefore, if you want your site to drive clients to your products and services, you need to have content which engages the reader.

A blog helps you SEO by placing fresh content about your site on the internet. For every blog that you write, that is an additional “page” of content for your site, especially if you use your sites name or link to other sources within the blog. The more content/pages which are available the more relevant the search engines will see your site as being.

Secondly, a blog allows you to have potential customers share snippets of your blog posts on their social media sites. This again inspires customer interaction and intrigue into your products and services. It also adds an identifier to the search engines when placed on an external page, building up your online presence and making your relevance higher.

Take non-stock images for your page and add alt text

Media such as images need to have alt text added. This is one of the first things which an SEO professional will do when adding or audjusting images to a website. They will go into your site and see what content is available. All the content will be checked to see if (1) it is relevant to the site (2) that appropriate tags and alt attributes have been added to the content and (3) if the content is non-duplicated.

The reason that you do not use stock images is that the content has been used by several other sites. It is not unique to your own website, although this doesn’t really effect your SEO efforts because search engines can’t really tell you what is on an image, they rely on the alt and title attributes to tell them. Depending upon the source of the images collected, the search engine may or may not even associate the image with your site (it should still associate the atl text though). Consider, if you have a stock image of say an apple from a popular site such as shutterstock, than then you are really not presenting any new data. However, if you have your own image with the alt text, identifying information, and a descriptive tag, then you have one more piece of SEO that sets you apart.

Hire someone to make a mobile friendly site

One of the best ways in which a business owner can contribute to their SEO is to hire a developer to make a mobile friendly site. This means that you will actually have 3 sites for your business. The first will be the desktop or “standard” site, the second will be the tablet formatted site, and the third will be the smartphone/iphone site, all formed from the same design that will actually squeeze to fit into any sized browser.

Google and Bing recently changed their ranking systems to where sites which have a mobile friendly site rank higher than those that do not. Upon launching this new addition to the ranking system 45% of non-mobile friendly sites say a decrease in their ranking. If this happened to you, the fix is easy. Make a mobile friendly site.

Other considerations

There are several ways in which you can help your SEO efforts. As a business, encourage customers to leave feedback on a dedicated page, or have a customer engagement survey which links to your site. Consider also implementing a video feed onto your page. By giving potential clients an endless supply of relevant and valuable videos, they will stay on your site longer.

Need Help?

If you are not sure where to get started, or if you would like to have a professional analyse the SEO of your site please contact us on 01942 498385. We are more than happy to address any inquires you may have regarding SEO or any of our SEO services.