Your website is designed to be consistent with the brand image and messaging you want to portray to your present and future customers. Now, how do you get potential customers to your web page?

Making your website Search Engine Optimized (SEO) friendly is an integral step in the launch of your website. I will go over some basic SEO practices that anyone can put in place for their new business's website, and some basic SEO maintenance practices that are a good idea to follow.

What is SEO? Some may ask. SEO, is: "the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine."

When setting up basic SEO for a new business start-up website, I first hone in on keywords. Key what? Keywords are key phrases that people search in Google for answers to questions they may have, of products/people/places they are looking for. Firstly, I conduct keyword research. This doesn’t have to be too time consuming. I aim to have it all said and done with a list of keywords in two hours tops. I go to Google and type in search terms related to the particular business that I am helping. I choose terms and questions that I believe potential customers would enter/ask and see the phrases that automatically populate. Then, I check out Moz Keyword Explorer and from there Google Trends to aid in finding popular keywords. You don’t want to use the most popular keywords as you will be competing for it. I always go for something mid-popular (if that’s even a word). This may also be something you’d prefer doing earlier, so that you don’t have to edit/later the current copy on your website. I am then mindful of these keywords when creating/editing the copy, titles, headings, blog and meta tags.

Have you heard of Yoast SEO? Yoast SEO is a free plugin (paid upgrade option as well) for WordPress that helps with your SEO/keywords. It helps you track how often you use keywords on your website, control titles and meta tag descriptions, among other things! I always include this plugin for my custom designed and built WordPress websites.
Add a blog/news section to your web page. Incorporate the keywords that you researched above and aim to post weekly. The more frequently you post, the more “current” your website looks to the search engines, ranking you higher. You can also continually update a news section, replace or add images to stay “current”.
Then come the links! Know any businesses related to your industry or current partners that are willing to add your business's website link to their page? Contact them, even offer to reciprocate the favour. Any incoming links are golden for ranking high on search engines. In addition, make sure that all of your outgoing links are working (this includes social media). Lastly, make sure that all of your page links are working (page to page on your website). A broken link is not in your favour for ranking near the top.
Submit your website to search engines - Google, Bing and Yahoo are the most popular in North America. This is letting these search engines know to “crawl” your web page. If you’re targeting other areas of the world, conduct some research on which search engines are most popular.
Create a Google Business Account. It is free, easy to use now that you can confirm your verification code through your phone (unlike the past where you needed to wait for a letter in the mail) and expected these days. When people Google a business, how often do you take the Coles notes on the right hand side and view the phone number, hours of operation, link to the website and some images and reviews. Oh reviews! Implement asking for reviews into your wrap-up process with clients. Reviews are great and people trust Google reviews. Note: people know when someone has asked a bunch of their friends to “add reviews” to their Google Business page. Be genuine. Five real reviews will always beat 20 fake ones.

Once you’ve put these basic SEO practices into motion, remember that you’re not finished! SEO is an on-going process. Continually monitor what’s working, what’s not and adjust accordingly!

Stay tuned for the next post where you will be given some insight on tracking codes that are worthy of being inserted in the back-end of your website. Bye for now!

Jan 9, 2024

KPI’s and Why You Need Them in Your Digital Marketing Strategy in 2024

Boost your business with KPIs! Learn the basics of Key Performance Indicators in our easy guide. KPIs help you measure success and make smart decisions. Check out our blueprint and downloadable template to create your own KPIs. Elevate your digital marketing strategy with KPI insights and take your business to new heights!

A Social Media Manager’s Perspective on How to Bang Out Social Posts FAST

Discover efficient ways to create stunning social media posts with Adobe Creative Cloud. Get insights from a social media manager on streamlining your design workflow using Adobe InDesign and Adobe Stock Images. From standardized dimensions to preserving editability, these strategies ensure visually appealing posts without sacrificing precious time. Unleash the power of efficient design, giving you more time for critical business tasks. After all, time is a valuable resource—make the most of it!

Apr 26, 2023

5 Reasons You NEED to Use Keywords in Your Content Marketing Strategy

Do you create content for your business online (website, blog post, social media, advertisements and more) with the intent of generating more leads and sales?

Do you spend countless hours creating this content to demonstrate your expertise in your industry while losing out on sleep, food and a social life?

Are you seeing the return on investment you anticipated?

Your content marketing strategy doesn’t have to eat countless hours of your time and leave you without any new leads or sales. Incorporating keywords into your content will help give you more time in your day and give you the results you desire.

In this 2 minute read, you’ll learn from Sarah March’s mistakes through her decade long career and save yourself from the heartache (and headache).