7 steps improve your businesses onsite SEO

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Introduction

When reading over most digital marketing companies’ websites it’s easy to think that implementing SEO is super hard.

Yet, with that said there are some things that you can do to improve your company’s onsite SEO that are not all that difficult.

So without further ado here’s 7 steps to improve your businesses onsite seo.

#1 Meta titles and Meta descriptions

Do you think that once a business has its websites on the first page of Google that is it, job done- no more work needed?

Well the simple answer to that is this is not the case. The reason being imagine for a second you looking to purchase a new coffee machine for your home, so you ask Google to find you some coffee machines that have excellent customer reviews.

Then you will be presented with loads of different websites to choose from, and this where a well written meta title and meta description can come into its own.

So, if don’t know what a meta title or meta description is, well quite simply put they are the title and short description that you see on Google’s results.

So, for example one meta title and meta description may grab your eye because it reads something like this:

Meta title: Bean to cup coffee machines, all our coffee machines can be delivered next day

Meta description: We stock a wide range of affordable coffee machines, all are voted above 9 /10 in terms of our customers satisfaction. Best of all we offer a money back guarantee.

So as you can see this type of meta title and meta description may grab your attention. This is why when your business gets on the first page of Google, it often doesn’t mean that your digital marketing agency will stop optimising your website to improve your click through rate (CTR).

Also as an seo agency will tell you, even when a business does get their website onto the first page of Google, it doesn’t mean that the business will stay there for any great period of time, unless the business invests in more SEO.

#2 Content marketing

Whether it’s a blog post or perhaps a guide that’s 3000 words long, content marketing can help to improve your businesses SEO.

However, here’s the thing, the content marketing must be white hat, if it isn’t well this could damage your businesses SEO, so only invest in white hat seo.

#3 Alt tags

Sometimes seo agencies talk about the really important parts of SEO, like building backlinks until they are blue in the face.

Yet, sometimes its also important not to forget the less important parts of SEO, like using alt text.

If you don’t know what alt text means, well its simply a description of what a picture is about.

So, for example, let’s say you sell used cars, you could add alt text that states “red-car-brand-of-car-and-model-of-car”.

So, when someone is looking for that brand of car, and that model in that colour well you will make your page of your website selling that car easier to find.

#4 Internal links

Let’s say you run a solicitor’s practice, and you specialise in the area of divorce, so naturally you would be writing weekly blog posts about the divorce process.

And this week you may well be writing a really long blog post, and your talking about changes that are due to take place to the divorce process.

Yet, you mention something that you know not many readers will know about, let’s say for example you mentioned the term “collaborative law”.

Now instead of describing what the term “collaborative law” means you may choose to use an internal link. So for example, you may use the term collaborative law as the anchor text, and then link to the main page that describes that service which your business offers in much more detail.

#5 H1- H6 tags

You may well be writing a really long blog post, lets say your talking about a new interior décor style.

And to achieve this style within your home your going to need to use different paint, a style of furniture, different colour furnishings and also different accessories for your home.

So naturally you wouldn’t group all these different items together, normally you split the blog post into sections. And the normal way to do this is to use titles.

Now to help Google, and the other search engines know what this new interior design blog post is about, you may wish to mark the titles with H1 to H6 tags.

Which basically tells the search engine that these are titles.

#6 Social media

Have you made it easy for people to talk about your business on social media? Well, it can be a really good way of getting people to know about your business.

For example someone who’s interested in interior design may say on social media, “I have just read this great article about how to turn your kitchen into a country farmhouse style, why not have a read!”.

Now a link may well be offered to your website, and then this social media post may bring in hundreds of new readers to your website.

So make it easy for people to find your social media accounts, so that your business can also obtain more followers.

#7 Contact us forms

Let’s return to our previous example, lets say someone is thinking of going through with a divorce, yet at the moment they are just looking to find a family law practice that they want to work with.

This person may visit say over 20 different family law websites, yet there may well be one that states “fill in this quick form, and talk to one of our solicitors free for 30 minutes over the phone”.

Now this may well be all that is needed for someone to fill in the form, and the business can then offer advice and hopefully gain a new client.

So contact forms which make it really easy for the person to contact your business, can be a really good marketing tool, this is so that you can gain your customers for your business.

If your business requires white hat seo, then why not call us?

What does “NAP” even mean?

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Introduction

If your company has just investing in SEO, then this means you’re probably already familiar with hearing the term “NAP”.

That’s to say your SEO agency may have mentioned in their monthly seo report that they have adding your companies NAP details to business citations.

Yet, what does this all mean?

Well this blog post is dedicated to explaining what NAP means and how it can be used to improve your company’s SEO.

Okay, come on then, what does NAP mean?

Well one things for sure, that is NAP doesn’t need some elaborate answer, that’s because NAP just means your businesses name, its address and the companies phone number- that is it!

However what need a bit more of an explanation is how a businesses NAP details can be used to help improve that businesses SEO.

So, how do you use a businesses NAP details to improve its SEO?

Well first things first you have to get the businesses NAP details on the website. Now that’s done you may wish to ask a digital marketing agency whether that information can be crawled and indexed.

Whether or not the businesses NAP details can be crawled and indexed is just a fancy way of saying can Google read this information?

For example, you may have a website where the NAP details are displayed in a picture, if so this would make it harder for Googlebot to read the information.

So you just want the information written in plain text, but if your seo company wants to push the  boat out, well we would recommend marking-up the text using Schema.

Now that’s done its time to set up a Google My Business account.

Google My Business

Now that the NAP information is on your website, you may wish to set up a Google My Business account.

Now this is an absolute piece of cake, so its well worth you staying an extra hour to build your Google My Business account.

Business citations

The next thing would be to build business citations, these are easy to do, just make sure that you mention your companies NAP details in exactly the same way you mentioned these on your website.

Okay so what’s the whole point of this?

Well, in order to answer that its easier to provide an example, so let’s imagine there are two builders and both want to invest in local seo.

Now builder A goes to an SEO company that hasn’t got a clue. The construction business changes addresses, they notify the seo company and they update the company’s website, but not the Google My Business account or the businesses 30 odd business citations.

What does this mean?

Well it means the business now has “conflicting business citations”- which simply means that the business is mentioned on its website as being in one address, and the business citations state its at the old address.

This confuses people that want to know where the construction firm is based, and it confuses Google’s algorithms as it may not know if the business is at the old address or the new one.

Now let’s look at construction firm B, they have hired a leading seo agency, and that marketing agency has correctly implemented the businesses NAP details.

So, the NAP details have been correctly put on the companies website, they can be read by Googlebot. Also the businesses Google My Business account and all of the businesses citations match with the website.

So which website do you think will rank higher?

Well its likely to be construction firm B.

Construction firm B doesn’t cause any headaches as to where the business is located, and therefore customers and the algorithms therefore have much better confidence that the business is at that business location.

Okay, it sounds like you know what your talking about, how much does this SEO cost?

Well, this does depend on the level of competition that your business faces. The reason it depends on the level of competition is simply because its likely that most of your companies competitors will also want their website on the first page of Google as well.

So this means if the level of competition is high, that the level of SEO work needed is often substantial.

So in order to provide your business with an accurate quote, we would we need to look at your website to work out how much work is needed, and how good your competitors SEO is as well.

If therefore you would like to obtain a quote, then why not give us a ring?

Why isn’t my website getting many organic visitors?

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Introduction

So, you may have been implementing SEO yourself, or possibly you have been paying an SEO company to implement seo for you.

Yet now your wondering why your business isn’t getting the number of organic visitors that you had hoped for.

This has you a bit confused, as you may have paid a lot money for SEO, and now your wondering well why isn’t your website generating more sales.

So we thought it would be really useful if we asked our seo consultants what we thought were some of the main reasons why a businesses may not be gaining many organic visitors.

Not enough backlinks

One of the main reasons some businesses are on the first page of Google is because they have good quality backlinks.

That’s to say some businesses many have thousands, and sometimes millions of good quality backlinks.

However, here’s the thing, your business shouldn’t just focus on building backlinks, your business should focus on building good quality backlinks.

The reason for this is that low quality backlinks, well, these could actually damage your businesses SEO.

The reason that is so is because Google could place a penalty on a website, which is called the Google Penguin penalty on any website which has low quality backlinks.

So only build good quality links.

Just not enough content

Okay so let’s say you’ve just launched your brand-new business, let’s say you are selling luxury kitchens for example.

Well, you may have paid a web design business an absolute fortune to build your website, and the website may show brilliantly which kitchens your business can offer.

Yet, with that said, the website may well be mostly visual, that’s to say yes a person will get a good idea of the different types of kitchens that you sell, yet there may not be enough written work describing the kitchens.

This means that Google may struggle to actually know what your business has to offer, as often the product description, meta titles, meta descriptions and various titles will give an idea of what that page is selling.

Yet if your website is very minimalistic, that’s to say there’s not much in the way of a description, well this could be the reason that the business is not gaining many organic visitors.

Bounce rate

It could be the case that some pages on your website are getting a lot of organic visitors, yet for some reason a lot of people are choosing to leave your companies website more or less straightaway.

Us SEO’s refer to such a page as having a high “bounce rate”. Your seo agency should therefore look at why the page has such a high bounce rate, and if a design change to the page could reduce the bounce rate.

Not enough service pages

Here’s a really common problem that some businesses will have, that is they have a website that doesn’t fully state all of the services that the business offers.

So for example let’s say that the business is an SEO agency, well some seo companies may state on their website that offer organic seo, and they may have a page set up on their website that is dedicated to explaining what organic seo, and what their company can offer.

Yet the business may not have a page set up for link building or a page set up for local seo for example.

So what this can mean is that the business may not be appearing for all the various services that the business can offer. They may well just be appearing for “organic seo” but not “link building” or “local seo”.

This could be one of the reasons why the business hasn’t many organic visitors.

Hired the wrong seo agency

Okay, so this one is pretty obvious, but its an important point, that is don’t stick to just one seo agency if you don’t believe as a business you are getting good value for money.

So many businesses stick to the same seo company, because like an old pair or shoes they feel comfortable.

So, make sure that whichever seo agency that you use, that you are getting good value for money. 

White hat

Here’s a really important point, your business should only ever invest in white hat seo. Sometimes some seo companies will not use white hat methods, which could mean that the business incurs a penalty.

Yet, the seo agency may not tell the business that they have incurred a penalty, and this may well be because the seo company is responsible for causing the penalty.

So, if your website receives a dip in organic visitors, make sure that as a business you find out why this is so. Also, only partner with white hat seo companies.

 

What does technical SEO even mean?

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Introduction

Let’s face it, learning about SEO can be a daunting prospect, after all there’s so many areas to learn.

There’s onsite and offsite SEO, there’s also technical SEO, not to mention using social media to help improve a business’s SEO as well.

So, it’s fair to say that it’s a broad subject area, yet we like to make things as easy as we can here, so let’s look at what technical seo is about, and what are some of the main areas of technical seo are.

So, what does technical seo even mean?

Technical SEO we like to think of as building the foundations for all of the other SEO work to be added to.

So, for example this means making sure a website can be “crawled and indexed” it also looks at such things as reducing 404’s, and also how the website is constructed.

So, in terms of a websites construction a seo agency may ask is the website easy to use? If its not could changes to say the menu improve the website?

Let’s have a look at a few of the technical seo areas that our seo company often looks at:

Schema

Quite often a company website will have a lot to say, so for example the about us page may have a lot of information such as introducing each member of staff.

And this is a lot of information that needs to be indexed, yet there is also the really important information that relates to your business, such as your businesses NAP details, and this should standout from the rest of the information, and how do you do this?

Well, you could use Schema, which means you could mark-up the information, such as your businesses NAP details with Schema, this way it becomes obvious to the search engines like Google that this is your businesses name, address and phone number, which is all good for your local seo.

Can your website be crawled and indexed?

Its all well and good having a website that looks great, as this will reflect on your companies’ image, yet if it can’t be crawled and indexed, well the websites not going to show up in the search engines.

So in a nutshell this means that Googlebot won’t be able to read your businesses website, which means it can not compute your businesses ranking signals, which means Google’s algorithm will not know how important your website is, which means it wont show up in Google’s search results.

404’s

Have you recently added new products or services to your website, and to do this you deleted some of the old product or service pages?

Hmm, well you could have deleted some of your business’s SEO goodness, and the reason for that is because those pages may have had backlinks leading to them.

If those pages had backlinks leading to them then those backlinks may have been the main reason the page ranked where it did on Google.

So, in a nutshell deleting such pages is like starting again, and then all that seo work also needs to be started again.

Also, not to mention that your visitors to your website may now be greeted with a 404 message, which may contribute to your website having a high bounce rate.

So, what should you do? Well, we would highly recommend speaking to a digital marketing agency before you delete any pages that may have high SEO value.

Duplicate content

You may have just got your website back from your website agency, and now your sitting back and thinking that this website looks simply brilliant.

Yet, sometimes some website developers just copy and paste text from another website, so for example let’s say you sell televisions, well the website design company may copy and paste product descriptions for each tele direct from the manufacturer’s website.

And you may now be thinking, well what’s wrong with that?

If the product description matches the TV that we are selling that’s a good thing right?

Wrong. If your website has duplicated work, such as product descriptions for instance, well this could mean that the pages SEO does not do particularly well, and too much duplicated work could mean your business incurs an algorithmic or manual penalty. Such a penalty could be the Google Panda penalty for instance.

Okay, this technical SEO sure sounds technical, so how much does your business charge for SEO?

Every business is different, plus how much we charge for SEO per month is dependent on how much competition your business faces.

So, why not call us so we can offer you a quote?

How to evaluate your competitor’s SEO

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Introduction

Are you fed up with your competitors being ranked higher than your business? Well, that’s understandable, and this is where our organic SEO service can help your business.

But first we would need to evaluate why your competitors are ranked higher. We mean to say is it because they have better backlinks? Is it because they have better onsite SEO?

Well, often there are many reasons as to why some businesses rank at the top of Google.

So, without further ado, lets look at what our seo consultants do when are evaluating a competitors website.

Onsite SEO

Content marketing

Content marketing is to SEO what fuel is to your car, that’s to say its needed. So whether you own a fashion brand, or you run a construction business, normally in order to improve a businesses SEO you need content marketing.

But what is content marketing we hear you cry! Well content marketing normally is simply written text, like a blog post, and if the content marketing is high-quality then this can help your business.

So you need to evaluate how good your competitors content marketing is, that’s to say how often do they publish blog posts? What are the blog posts like, do they offer interesting and useful information.

For example, let’s say you run a dental practice, and you want more people to contact your business for teeth whitening. Well, writing blog posts explaining how the teeth whitening process works is a good start.

Anchor text

Anchor text is simply the text that you click on in order to follow a backlink. So for example, lets say you retail clothing, and you have text is highlighted and reads “sale on t-shirts now on”- if you click that text and it takes you to the page where t-shirts are on sale, then that description is the anchor text.

You should optimise your businesses anchor text in a white hat way. Have a look at some of your competitors, how are they using anchor text on their website?

Meta titles and meta descriptions

Quite simply put, when you search for a item, let’s say a new car online, well you will be presented with loads of websites that sell new cars. Within the results will be the organic listings, which will have a title and a short description about what that business has to offer.

This description is called the meta title and the meta description, so for example it may well read:

Meta title: We sell new cars at affordable prices, we also offer 0% interest on all new cars

Meta description: Why not purchase a new car from us, during the month of January we have fantastic prices on our range of new cars.

That’s just an example of what a meta title, and meta description may look like, yet you should create unique meta titles and meta descriptions for each page on your website.

Structure

What’s the structure of your competitors website like? For example, let’s say they are a business that offers many different services, such as an accountancy practice.

So does the accountancy practice that ranks number one have different pages for each service that the business offers?

So for example is there a page dedicated to VAT and one for corporation tax, if so does each page have a lot of information or not much.

Your seo agency and your website design agency should work together to design your website in such a way that you can improve your businesses seo.

So for example your accountancy practice may describe every service that it offers all on one page, while your SEO company may recommend that each distinct service that your business offers should have its own page.

Offsite SEO

Backlinks

What are your direct competitors backlinks like? Are they high-quality? Are they relevant to that business?

You should work with a white hat seo agency to work out which backlinks your competitors have, that your business may also be able to obtain.

So for example, let’s say you run an employment law practice, well your competitors employment law practice may have an employment law website that links to it.

That website offers news and information to employment solicitors, it is widely regarded as a high-quality source of information for employment lawyers, therefore your business may also seek to obtain a backlink from this company.

Can we help?

Does your business require help with its SEO?

We can offer white hat seo at affordable prices, so why not give us a call?

4 ways you can improve your businesses local SEO

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Introduction

There are quite simply many different ways that you can improve your businesses SEO. We mean a business can quite literally take its pick, from implementing business citations, through to content marketing.

There are hundreds of different ways, but we realise that this doesn’t really help a business, as often they want to narrow down the list of SEO tasks, and to then have a list of the more important tasks that they can concentrate on.

So, this had our SEO agency thinking, and we asked ourselves what do we think are the most common things businesses miss when improving their businesses SEO.

So, without further ado, here’s 4 of top tips to help you improve your local seo.

#1 Add detail to your Google My Business account

Sometimes some business set their Google My Business account up in a bit of a hurry. Perhaps you’ve just rented or purchased new office space, and in the frantic rush to set up your business perhaps the Google My Business account was quickly created.

This means the Google My Business account could well be lacking detail, for example the business description may well be lacking detail.

Well here’s our top tip, its well worth going back to your Google My Business account, and then adding as much detail as you can. Accurately state which hours your business opens, add a detailed business description, and add photos of your business, i.e the store front, or your team of staff.

#2 Make sure your onsite SEO is spot on

Some businesses go to a website designer, and receive a website that they think looks great, and that the website accurately portrays the business.

Yet, quite often new websites can lack the most basic of SEO details. So, we would highly recommend working with an seo agency to spot seo weaknesses with your website.

These could be something as basic as not dedicating each service your business offers to its own page on the website.

Or it could involve a lot more work, such as the whole website may not have much in the way of written text. So for example, each service that the business offers just lacks detail.

This means your seo company will normally recommend changes that are needed onsite, that’s before further seo work is implemented.

#3 Obtain business reviews

We think its really important to obtain reviews from your customers. However, we would never recommend writing business reviews yourself, or obtaining fake reviews.

Google’s algorithm is really sophisticated, it can spot fake business reviews, which means instead of helping to improve your businesses seo, well you could be in matter of fact doing the complete opposite.

So instead obtain genuine reviews from your customers.

#4 Add blog posts

We believe adding well-written blog posts, that your customers are likely to find useful and interesting, well this can help to improve your businesses SEO.

However, some businesses write blog posts which can really help to improve their seo, while some others implement seo which is not white hat, and therefore means there business obtains a penalty.

For example, many businesses have obtained Google Panda penalties, that’s for adding blog posts that are deemed low quality.

For example, lets say the business is a skip hire business, so they keep mentioning “skip hire + city” in their blog posts too much, well this is a sure-fire way of obtaining a penalty.

So, if you do not know what white hat seo is, we would recommend contacting a white hat seo agency.

Can we help?

Does your business require help with its SEO? If so we can help, so why not call us today?

Which SEO tools should our business be using?

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Introduction

There are simply loads of different seo tools a business can use, some are free, yet often many require a monthly subscription.

And which tools your business requires does depend on what information you need, for example if you want to check your businesses backlinks, you will need a backlink checker.

However, there are some tools that we recommend most businesses to use, these tools offer really useful information.

This information can also help you while your implementing white hat seo.

Google Analytics

This is probably one of the more well-known seo tools, and its also fair to say that most seo agencies, including ours use this tool.

It’s very easy to use, and Google Analytics can offer you loads of useful information such as:

·        How many organic visitors have visited your website

·        The websites bounce rate

·        How many visitors you have received altogether, so say via organic, social or direct

·        And much more

Often most businesses use Google Analytics to simply see how many visitors the website is obtaining.

For example, a good seo company should help your business to improve where it ranks for certain keywords.

So for example, if you run a solicitors practice, that specialises in the divorce process, well you will often want your website to rank high for the term “divorce solicitors” or “family lawyers”.

As your seo agency works on improving where your business ranks, you should start to see more visitors visiting your company’s website.

However, a good digital marketing agency wont just use information such as how many visitors your website has received.

No, instead a good online marketing agency will want to know what the websites bounce rate is like.

For example, once visitors land on your company’s website how long are they spending their?

Or, are they bouncing straight-off? If the bounce rate is high, you have to ask how can this be reduced? For example, can the product or service descriptions be improved?

Google Search Console

Another really useful tool that Google offers is called Google Search Console. This tool was previously named Google Webmaster tools.

If you are implementing seo this tool is a must. It allows you to obtain a list of backlinks that link to your website.

It even allows you to obtain the list of backlinks via Excel, so its super easy for your seo company to get some idea of which websites are linking to your business.

Also you can obtain an idea of which search queries your website is being returned for. So let’s say for example you run an accountancy practice.

You may already rank on the first page of Google for “accountancy practices + name of a city”, so with that in mind your seo company starts to work on improving other keywords you wish the business to rank for.

So for example, you may have accountants that specialise in filling in VAT returns, so you wish your business to rank for “accountants that specialise in VAT” for example.

So by using your Google Search Console account, you can gain an idea of where your business ranks for this term.

Not only that, say your business ranked 33rd place for this term last month, well you can ask for the data of where the business ranked for this term last week.

You may spot that your business is now ranked 7th for this term, so you recognise that your white hat seo is helping to improve your website.

Yes, but we pay an seo company to do this, why should we do it?

Well, simply put its always a good idea to check if your SEO agency are doing what they say they are.

For example, you may obtain your monthly seo report via e-mail, and once opened you see that the marketing agency states your business obtained 10,000 organic visitors last month.

And you are impressed by that figure, as the month before it may have been a lot less. But now you have your Google Analytics account, you can check this yourself.

So you may spot that the figure is correct, yet the bounce rate for the website has increased massively.

So basically it allows your business to keep your seo company in check, and if you have any questions, you then have the information from your Google Analytics account to use when you ask questions.

For example, you may ask why has the bounce rate increased from 40% to over 90% and what steps are the seo business taking to help reduce the businesses bounce rate?

Does your business require help with its white hat seo?

 

How does local SEO work? (Bristol)

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Introduction

Most businesses in Bristol now face a lot of competition. So, it doesn’t matter if you’re a plumber or sell electric guitars, quite simply put its vital that your business stands out.

And what better way to stand out from all the other businesses than to invest in SEO?

First things first, what is local SEO?

If your looking for a local business, let’s say a local accountant, well the businesses that appear on the first page of Google have most likely invested in SEO.

The reason is Google places businesses on the first page that have the strongest ranking signals, and are the most relevant for that term.

So, for instance, let’s say you were looking for a accountants that could help your business with its VAT.

So, when you search for “VAT accountants + city or town” well the businesses that appear will have normally invested in both onsite and offsite seo.

This is often an ongoing process of building backlinks, writing content marketing and optimising the website so it that appears higher for relevant business terms, such as VAT accountants.

Google My Business (map listings)

Has your business obtained its Google My Business account? No? Well you should have!

In order for an seo company to implement local seo, they will often need to set up a Google My Business account.

This often doesn’t take very long, however its most definitely worth spending more time writing a detailed Google My Business account.

The reason being is this is central to the success of your businesses local seo, as most businesses don’t just want their business to appear in the organic business results, they want also for their business to appear in the Google My Business results as well.

 

Why invest?

Well this ones rather easy to answer, most businesses invest as they recognise that a lot of people are buying products or locating services they need online.

So the question really is, can a business today afford not to invest?

Without investing in local seo you may well be handing a potentially massive advantage to your direct competitors.

Also with organic seo the longer your business puts off investing, the longer your competitors will have to strengthen their seo.

Which means that sometimes the longer your business leaves it, well the longer is it to catch up.

 

Who decides where is a business is ranked?

Google has a really clever algorithm, this algorithm calculates how strong your websites ranking signals are.

Now ranking signals can be anything from backlinks, through to a meta description. However, as most people know, some marketing agencies are better at implementing seo than some other businesses.

So the businesses that use the best quality white hat seo, and the businesses that have the strongest ranking signals, well these are the business that rank on the first page of Google.

 

Obtain business reviews

Here’s a top tip, ask your customers to leave you reviews on your Google My Business account.

Do not however write fake business reviews, as these will be detected by Google’s algorithm.

Instead if a customer states they are really happy with your product or the service your business has offered, why not ask them would they be willing to leave your business a review?

Is onsite SEO important when it comes to local seo?

Onsite SEO is massively important when it comes to implementing local seo. For example, a mistake so many businesses offer is to group all their services together.

So, let’s say for example you run say a plumbing business, well sometimes a plumbing business may state they offer emergency call-outs, boiler breakdown repair and offer to install complete central heating systems all on one page.

Instead most seo consultants would agree its far better to split each service that the business offers onto its own page.

Why you should only invest in white hat seo

Black hat seo is quite simply a total waste of time. Black hat seo just means that a website will incur a penalty.

A far better form of seo is white hat seo. If a business was to incur a penalty, say a Google Penguin penalty well this can mean that the businesses rankings drop.

Also, to rectify the problem the business may ask another seo agency to fix the problem, this can sometimes be costly.

What are business citations?

Business citations are just mentions of your businesses NAP details. NAP simply stands for name of the business, its address and the businesses phone number.

What are backlinks?

The backlinks that seo companies are often interested in building are called do-follow backlinks. Yet for the backlinks to be useful to your business they must be:

·        Relevant to your business

·        Built in a white hat way

·        Be high-quality

·        Do-follow if you want the link to pass “link juice”

·        Anchor text must be optimised in a white hat way.

Can we help?

If your business requires help with its seo, then why not call us?

 

 

How long does organic SEO take?

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Introduction

Most businesses want to appear on the first page of Google. After all, it can often mean that a business can generate more sales.

As more and more businesses move away from more traditional forms of advertising, more businesses are investing in SEO.

However, even though organic SEO has been around for a great deal of time, a lot of business owners still have unrealistic goals of what they would like to achieve.

For example, they only have a few hundreds of pounds per month to spend, but they want to rank on the first page up against large businesses.

So, businesses first and foremost need to be realistic. And you may now be thinking, well that sounds rather defeatist!

I am going to vote with my feet and choose an seo agency that’s more up-beat and tells me what I want to hear.

Well! This is often where so many businesses go wrong, as most businesses are only an e-mail away or a phone call from meeting an seo that will tell you can aim for world domination on a shoe-string budget.

Yet, what can happen if the seo work is rubbish, is the website incurs a penalty. It can mean the website becomes very difficult for customers to find on Google.

Also the recovery process, from something like a Google Penguin or Google Panda update can be a long one, and if you are obtaining expert advice to remedy the problems, well this can often be costly as well.

So, this doesn’t mean that all seo companies that offer cheap seo are bad, or that the most expensive agencies are the best, it simply boils down to this, it comes down to how good in terms of quality the SEO is, and whether the seo company is being clear and honest with you as a business.

 

So, how long does it take to get a business onto the first page of Google?

Here’s the thing, it all boils down to how competitive your business sector is. How strong are your competitors?

And this is where the business states well you should be telling us, and here’s the thing, each website is ranked according to how strong over 200 signals are.

So yes an seo agency could make a rough assessment in terms of how strong your competitors are, but that is all it would be a rough estimate.

So when a business simply states it can take up to six months, or 12 months, well this is often just something they have got used to saying, sometimes without really doing much research into how strong your competitors are.

 

So what’s the most honest approach to take?

Well that’s easy, but not one businesses often want to hear as they want set dates to hold an seo agency to.

The honest approach is to evaluate each competitor that’s on the first page, state why the seo consultant believes each website is strong. Be honest and say that business 1, 2 and 3 have good quality seo that looks to implemented over a very long timeframe, perhaps many years, and state that to overtake such competitors that the business will have to exceed these efforts, and be prepared that it can take a similar timeframe.

Yet, the seo agency should state ways they believe they can implement work which may shorten the timeframe and use white hat seo methods to try and implement better marketing strategies.

This is an honest approach, and guess what? The businesses that have been hit by penalties in the past, the ones that know of businesses that have been hit with penalties, well this longer more thought-out approach suddenly becomes more appealing than the agencies which state they will make your business an overnight success.

 

Why does a business have to pay each month?

This is something that a lot of businesses simply struggle to understand when first investing in SEO, that is why do they need to pay each month for SEO?

Well the simple fact is businesses will always have competitors that also want their business to be placed on the first page of Google.

So this often means that your competitors will also be working on their SEO, so the standard that has to be exceeded in order to get a business onto the first page becomes higher and higher.

Therefore if a business was to pause their seo investment, or even stop completely, well often its only a short amount of time before the competition quickly replace their business.

 

Why is it such a slow process?

Often many businesses when they hear how long it can take to get their business onto the first page will be deterred from investing in SEO.

As often if the seo is implemented correctly, well it can take a long time. So, often this is where some businesses are automatically attracted more to the businesses that state they can get their business onto the first page in a much shorter timeframe.

However, this is where the business must ensure white hat methods are being used, as if the business doesn’t use white hat seo methods, then the business could incur a penalty.

And, this is often why some businesses can promise much shorter timeframes to get a business onto the first page because they are not using white hat methods. And its only then later that the business realises that they may have been hit by a penalty, and its then that the business realises why the marketing agency was charging low prices, and over promising on what they could deliver.

As we earlier mentioned, penalties can take a long time to recover from, so this could mean your business could lose business, and in order to correct the penalty this can be costly sometimes, that’s if you pay an seo expert to correct the issues.

The client has to be realistic

So in reality, the client has to be realistic. The reason is if a business chooses the wrong seo business, well this can result in a penalty.

So our best advice would be to partner with a white hat seo that’s honest about how long it can take to get your business onto the first page of Google. Even if the timeframes sound longer than what some other companies are stating, you have to evaluate is this because they are implementing good quality seo, and if so surely that’s better than cheap seo that could mean your business incurs a penalty?

 

How we can help

If your business requires white hat seo, then why not give us a ring?



How do you build backlinks?

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Introduction

If you have ever invested in white hat seo, well you will know that quite often the SEO agency will need spend a lot of time building high-quality backlinks.

So, this means that when a business is looking at where their marketing agency is spending time, often a large chunk will be spent building links.

This means that most businesses recognise that link building is often an essential part of SEO, yet with that said, many business still do not know how to build backlinks.

This blog post explains what backlinks are, and also how to build backlinks as well.

So, why exactly are backlinks so important?

There are thought to be over 200 ranking signals that the search engines use to work out how important a website is.

This means that everything from meta descriptions, through to backlinks are calculated by an algorithm in order to work out where a business should be ranked.

Yet, with that said, not all ranking signals are worth the same, that’s to say some are more important than others.

So, for example backlinks are widely regarded as one of the most important ranking signals. Yet, on the other hand alt tags are less important.

 

Why does the quality of the backlinks matter?

So many businesses wrongly thought that the more backlinks they obtain the better, that’s to say they did not consider quality as important.

Yet when Google implemented the Google Penguin update many businesses were hit by a link penalty.

This meant that a lot of businesses that were hit by the penalty, saw their rankings decrease and sometimes the business would be removed altogether.

This is why its absolutely crucial that only quality backlinks are built.

 

So, what exactly are internal backlinks?

Internal backlinks are simply links that take you to another page within the same website. So for example lets say you are a dentist, and you run a dental practice.

Within the blog section of your website you may well be talking about teeth whitening, and you may therefore use a link to your teeth whitening page on your website.

This way when someone is reading your blog post, and they wish to read more about the teeth whitening services that you offer, they can click the anchor text and then follow the link.

What are external backlinks?

External backlinks are super important, and leading seo agencies spend a lot of time building high quality backlinks for their clients.

The reason that external backlinks are so important is, the websites that are on the first page of Google will normally have a lot of good quality backlinks.

This means in order to beat your competitors, normally your business will also need to build high-quality backlinks.

So, what exactly is a no-follow and a do-follow backlink?

Seo consultants will want to send what is known as “link juice” to a particular page on your website.

Link juice, if it comes from a high quality website can help to improve where your website ranks.

Yet, often many good quality backlinks will be needed.

No follow backlinks do not pass link juice, yet they are still important when it comes to the success of your businesses SEO. The reason for that is many leading seo companies believe that a good quality group of backlinks should consist of both no-follow and do-follow backlinks.

If your website was to just purely have do-follow backlinks well this may sometimes look artificial.

 

What does “anchor text” mean?

The anchor text is simply the text that you click on to follow a link, so for example, lets say you sell used cars. If you mention within a blog post a brand of car, and you want to offer readers to click the link and see what cars you have for sale, you may make the mention of the brand of car the anchor text.

 

So, how exactly should our business be building backlinks?

We think that the best way a business can obtain backlinks is to earn them. What we mean by this is we always strongly recommend that a business offers really useful information.

So lets say you run a business which sells wood burning stoves online, well you may wish to write blog posts which answer commonly asked questions that your customers have.

Such as, which wood burning stoves do you sell are the most efficient. Now, such a blog post may then be shared on social media, such as on Twitter.

Then once many people have read the article some may choose to link to the article. So for example an interior décor website may think that the article will interest their readers, so they link to the article.

This way your business is building backlinks, yet businesses are linking to your website without you having to ask them.

However, with that said, your seo agency or your business should be making sure that you have quality backlinks linking to your website. If the links are spam then you should discuss this with your SEO business.