Dive Deeper into SEO
Kerry Ferguson is back to continue our guest blog series. Once a month, we share a guest blog post (in this case, 2 posts!) from an industry expert. Kerry is the award-winning co-founder of Gwe Cambrian Web, where the team create affordable, bilingual (Welsh & English) websites for small businesses. Kerry also teaches a range of digital modules at Aberystwyth University and she shares her knowledge in digital communities to help demystify SEO.
In the last post, Kerry shared what SEO is, why SEO is important, and shared her 6-step SEO strategy with us. In this post, she dives deeper into some of these steps to help you help your website reap the rewards in the search engine results.
Keyword Research
Probably one of my favourite SEO tasks to do for clients. Break this down and keep it simple, else you might get a bit overwhelmed. My advice would be to first write down the themes your business / website covers.
For example, my business offers services in website design, SEO and digital marketing. Three clear themes, or potentially four if you feel social media marketing deserves its own pillar.
Then, brainstorm the keywords you expect to rank for in each theme first of all. Write them all down (or type them onto a spreadsheet). After that, the research begins. Use the Google search autofill for new ideas, and when performing a search, check out the Google Suggests at the bottom of the page. You can also use Amazon if you are an ecommerce stall. Once you have a good list of suggestions, you can then look at the Google Keyword Planner (free) or other tools such as SEMrush, SE Ranking and so on to analyse the keywords. Bear in mind that you want keywords that people actually do search for, but not ones that millions of people use every day – this will make your content very hard to find in the huge crowd!
On-Page SEO
I don’t want to simply mention on-page SEO above, because this is a great way to start working on your website, and to be honest, it is fairly straightforward once you have done your keyword research.
Let me breakdown some of the elements that I always say, if you can only do a handful on things within your SEO strategy, let them be these:
Edit your meta titles and descriptions:
If you use a platform like WordPress, it will often pull through your meta data (and descriptions) automatically. It’s trying to be helpful, and will pull through your page title and the first sentence or two of the page.
More often than not, that actually won’t be enough to entice someone on the search results to do that all important click. So, spend some time editing your meta data and descriptions.
For example, original title might be “Search Engine Optimisation”. This is the title that appears on our page. For search results, I want to change this to say “Search Engine Optimisation for Your Website”. And, instead of choosing the first sentence from the page, I then decide to entice the visitor further by explaining what SEO is in the description. This shows the visitor that I know my stuff and that I can help them specifically with their website. They are small, but important changes.
Make sure you are using heading tags:
This one sounds complicated but I promise you it isn’t. In the code of every webpage are heading tags that look like this: <h1>. This is a heading tag 1, and there are in total 6 (h1, h2, h3, you get the idea).
Every page needs heading tags, to help the search engines understand the hierarchy of the content, what’s important, what isn’t. Every page MUST have only 1 <h1> tag, and this will most often be your post title. Below this, the next heading will be a <h2>. If the content after is of equal importance, it can also be a <h2>, but if not, then <h3>. Think of it like creating easy chapters within a page for your search engines to understand, and to comprehend. Again, if you use a platform like WordPress, then it’s really easy to select the text and change the formatting to be a header.
Finally, with on-page SEO, utilise those keywords from your recently keyword research session. Pepper them in naturally, don’t stuff them, and always consider your audience.
Technical SEO
This isn’t a techy as it sounds, I promise! There are some pretty cool tools you can use out there to check how your website ranks when it comes to technical SEO.
Check out the Google Mobile Friendly Test to see how your website ranks for mobile use. This is so important, the majority of your users will be browsing on a mobile these days so make sure that their experience is the best it can be.
Secondly, check out your website load speed, I usually recommend Pingdom and to do this over the few days at different times to establish an average. If your website is slow, is it because of your hosting? Are your images huge in size so download speeds are sluggish? Is the website very clunky in terms of background code? The faster your website, the better your visitor experience will be!
Thirdly, make sure your website has an SSL certificate. This should be included for free in your hosting, please do not pay for it! If you don’t know what it is, it’s basically a signal that tells your visitors, and search engines, that your website is secure and trustworthy – you’ll know if you have one if your website starts with https and not just http.
Finally, the site map! Super important and easy to implement, this shows search engines the structure of your website, so it can index more effectively. Platforms like WordPress do this automatically!
This isn’t an exhaustive list of technical SEO stuff, by a country mile – but, these four things are the most important in my opinion to get you started. Technical SEO can get a tad complicated, but these items I feel can be done by anyone and everyone!
Local SEO
One thing I haven’t yet mentioned is Local SEO. Another important feature to consider, and especially if you are targeting your local area, for example, if you are a coffee shop or hairdresser.
The main thing I can recommend when looking at Local SEO is to make sure you have set up and optimised your Google My Business profile. It’s free, and when set up properly will ensure you end up in those “coffee shops near me” results on the Google map.
Conclusion
SEO is also cost-effective compared to other forms of advertising. Unlike traditional forms of advertising such as print or television ads, SEO is a long-term strategy that can continue to deliver results for years to come. By investing in SEO, you can improve your online presence and reach your target audience more effectively, without having to spend a lot of money on advertising.
Hopefully the pointers to begin here are a strong starting point for you, and don’t forget, just think of it as TLC for your website. It so deserves it.
🔗 You can connect with Kerry on LinkedIn or her website.
👀 Watch this space for more Guest Blogs throughout the year! If you’re interested in writing a guest post for The Bloom Blog, get in touch.
Bloom Creative is a design business based in Kent offering branding & brand refreshes, quality digital design, and eye-catching print design. You can browse our services or book in a free discovery call.
