Why SEO is so important to your website?
In this news item I would like to share why SEO is so important to your website and why you just cannot ignore having SEO work. The reality is when you have a website you need to carry out maintenance all the time as Google will keep changing the Google algorithms. I think of it as having a car and needing to keep servicing and putting fuel in to make it all run smoothly.
Just recently, Sentio Marketing has started some work with a new client, they have had no social media updates or indeed any updates and SEO work on their website done for many months, indeed years. It was quite typical of SMEs they have a good offering and do well initially and then when the marketing mechanisms are not updated and made to look current then business drops off. The brand is perceived to be not as strong as it is not being promoted across the social media channels and search engines. However, all is not lost! The good news is we knew we could fix this quite easily.
If SEO is not carried out then your brand awareness will simply fall away, you just cannot rely on potential customers finding you by looking on page 3 or 4 (or even lower rankings) of the Google search engine. We hope the tips and items below will help you with your understanding of SEO and how it works.
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
- SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation
- This means the process or work will maximise/promote the number of visitors to your website. This is done by making sure the website will appear high on the list of results by a search term in a search engine such as Google.
- SEO does this through the process of driving traffic from news items, well written editorial and organic pages on your website. This is then will appear in search engines and rank your website and its pages.
- The higher your website is ranked the higher it appears in a search engine; this is how customers will find your website and content which is relevant to them. This in turn drives the customer to your website
How do I make my website SEO friendly?
Naturally, for companies with larger budgets they can outsource an SEO company or marketing agency to produce the SEO work. Also, you can take on an SEO expert as an employee in your company but, not every business can afford this.
For the smaller businesses and for companies who do not have huge marketing budgets then there are ways to improve your SEO on your website. Here below are some tips to get you started.
- If you do have any budget at all you can download Yoast as a widget on your website. This is compatible with websites built in WordPress and Shopify for example (as well as others). Yoast is a plugin that helps with SEO and is more of a generic tool but, really good as it gives you the traffic light system to write content and also to optimise your content for search engines. It is a great way to get started
- You can also use meta description in your dashboard on the content page and this helps Google find your content so make this really easy to read, call to action and make sure the key phrases are contained it the meta description. What we mean is if your page is about selling shoes and the title is about penny loafers then make sure this term is in the meta description.
- Tags; these are a really good way to make your content relevant and help customers find your content once on the website but also with search engines. If using a platform like WordPress then the tags are at the side and you can simply pop these in and they appear net to the content.
- Put categories in as this will also help and make sure the pages are relevant in the search engines
- Post relevant content regularly! This is what good SEO is about and remember content is King.
- Use external and internal back links as this helps with ranking your pages as you have content which promotes other content around your site and the web.
- When posting images make sure they have the alt tags (these are tags explaining your images) like tags but for images.
Why does it take so long for SEO to work?
Finally, we thought it is really important to make sure you understand SEO is a long-term marketing tool. Many people think instant results but, you just do not get this with SEO. If you want instant results then maybe look at Google Ads, Social Media Ads and Business Ads through LinkedIn. Beware that for some platforms such as Google the auction prices are high, you can soon spend a great deal. Social media is generally much cheaper.
Please note SEO is organic and this means it takes time for the SEO to work. As a rule of thumb, it takes around 6-12 months in some cases for the SEO to work and for some businesses it can take 3-6 months just depends on the competition in your sector. What the search engines do is compare your content with the competition in the same area of expertise, they then give your web pages the authority they need to be ranked.
It is also worth remembering with SEO once you start it is important you keep going as your website will simply fall from the rankings once you stop the SEO work for reasons explained above.
If you would like further information or would like to arrange an informal chat to discuss your marketing and up and coming projects please contact us by emailing Sentio Marketing
We also offer a sample pack to see our work and examples of what can be achieved through our marketing services.
