January is here and a Happy New Year! With frosty winter mornings comes the promise of crisp new business – but not if your website remains unseen in Google!
To get your business to the top of Google, strip your SEO right back to basics with these 5 top tips, or speak to the team here at Total SEO so we can take care of it for you.
Get a fast, free review of your website now by completing the request at the top of this page and find out the good and bad about your site, as seen by Google
Create quality links to your site
Google wants to know that it can trust your website, and everything surrounding it, so it pays to make sure that anything that links back to your site is reputable and relevant – ultimately protecting your good name. It is 100% better to spend time and effort building a handful of high quality links that you know are of value, than using quick fix methods building huge numbers of spammy ones, that have no value and no relevance to your business. With links, quality is more important than quantity, take the time to ask business contacts and other website owners for a link to your site, get involved in social media, become an authority in your field online and the good links naturally.
Write engaging, keyword rich content
They say a picture paints a thousand words – but does it? While nice images look great on your website, and are fantastically engaging for your visitors, Google can’t read images and will ignore them unless it has a way of understanding what they are about. If 80% of your website is built on pictures, then there is also an 80% chance that you are being looked over. Google wants to see well written, quality, keyword rich content that it can read, so make absolutely sure that content you do write ticks all the boxes. Also, make sure you give images an Alt text which allows Google to understand what they relate to.
Choose specific, relevant keywords
As basic as it sounds, targeting the right keywords plays a huge part in your Google rankings – and the more specific they are to your business, the better. For example, the search term ‘Gardening’ will throw up huge competition such as Homebase, Council Offices and even the BBC when you search in Google. Make the keywords more specific, for example, “Landscape Gardening Services” , then you have immediately given yourself 75% more chance of getting a high ranking on page one and getting found by people who are actually searching for what you offer.
Update your website regularly
It is amazing the amount of websites that lay dormant for years without ever being updated. By keeping it fresh and regularly updated will ensure Google keeps coming back to the site to check for new changes and updates. Articles and blog posts are the perfect way to do this as it allows you to feed your website with more keyword rich content and makes Google stand up and pay attention. Keep on adding and changing text content to ensure you build up momentum with Google.
Keep your Meta Data relevant.
This one is as old as Google itself, it is imperative that you keep your Meta Data (page titles and descriptions) relevant to what is on the page. It’s no good feeding the keyword ‘Handmade Leather Bags’ into your Meta Data, when really the page that it is on is actually about ‘Printed Carrier Bags’, also, avoid using the meta keywords tag, Google ignores this and it can be seen as spam. Review your meta data every few months, making tweaks to this can have a big impact in where your site appears in searches.
There is a lot more to successful SEO than just these 5 tips, but they are sure to help get your site moving in the right direction.
If you are struggling to get onto page one of Google visit our website and request a free review by completing the form at the top of this page – or call our friendly team of SEO experts at 01252 329160.
