"The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight."
" It’s not about ‘get the traffic’ — it’s about ‘get the targeted and relevant traffic. "
It’s not about ‘get the traffic’ — it’s about ‘get the targeted and relevant traffic.
Business owners; has the idea of SEO got your head all in a muddle?
Do you just want to get back to the business of running your business and pretend that SEO isn’t a thing?
I can sense you all out there nodding your heads (and possible inserting a curse word for emphasis too).
The magic behind SEO that makes it work is all about language, mathematics and (believe or not) a good dose of common sense.
Search optimising your own content is actually really easy once you get around the mental block about the technical side of things.
At the end of the day, you don’t really need to understand in depth how it works, you just need to know what works. And then do it. (Strong emphasis on the “do it” part!)
Here are some easy ways you can get started with SEO
Analyse Your Pages
You are probably becoming aware that there are things you can do to improve the SEO of your page, even without spending any money. But how do you know what needs improving, and then how do you go about fixing it?
There are a number of plugins available to attach to your Content Management Service (also known as WordPress, Squarespace, Joomla etc) which can go over each of your pages and give you an SEO report. One of the very best of these is WordPress SEO by Yoast which is available to all WordPress users, and in itself is almost a reason to choose WordPress for your CMS.
You can give each of your pages a live action report, which will rate you on how well each one is optimised, and list the areas in which you can specifically improve, including all the places where you can add keywords, as well as assessing the length and readability of your blogs and reminding you to insert internal and external links. It’s a simple tool for anyone to use, and this just scratches the surface of what it can do.
Start with giving yourself a report, and then look below for some areas where you may be able to improve.
Let it be known though that getting a green light on Yoast, does NOT mean your page is optimised to perform well in search results. Which brings me to my next point…
Keywords
SEO starts with keywords, and popularity of those keywords (because optimising for a term that no-one is searching for wont get you very far).
All SEO assessments need to have a point of reference to get their bearings. Plugins will check to see how well you rate, but they need to know the keywords you are trying to rank for, AND you need to be optimising for keywords that are worth ranking for in the first place.
Having more thoughtful, targeted keywords is a good place to start.
Keywords that are:
- slightly longer (aka long-tail keywords)
- more specific to your audience (talk their language)
- act on user intent (ie. people looking for information “how to…”, people looking to buy “buy online/shop/in my area”)
- have search volume (people actually looking for this term)
Considering all of this to find your target keywords will ultimately create better conversion.
So if you sell charcoal drawings of cows, you would do better optimising for a keyword like ‘buy cow artwork online’ than just optimising for ‘cows’ or ‘charcoal drawings’.
Why? Because anyone searching for just “cows” could be looking for a whole range of things from farm gear through to novelty items or actual cows! Anyone searching for ‘cow artworks online’ is specifically looking for artwork of cows. See the difference in why the second would result in more clicks (and sales) for you?
Hot Tip: Optimising for local search will yield faster results than broad, target everyone everywhere, keywords.
Blogging for Business
To rank well in search engine results your content needs to be relevant, interesting and authoritative. Search engines have ways of working out if you fit these criteria without a little man at Google having to read every single online page on to give a subjective opinion. Instead they have robots who we have to impress instead.
You can improve the SEO of your blog content by:
- having longer blog posts, that are at least 1000 words long
- adding new blogs or content to your website regularly
- writing content that is engaging, as well as easily readable
- writing headings that grab people
- optimise your meta title and description to make them more inspiring to click
For more information on this, you may also want to check out our article on how to search engine optimise your blog posts for conversion or download the Ultimate Guide To SEO For Blogging.
On-page Optimisation
You can make a number of changes to your page directly that will increase the quality of your SEO. These include:
- inserting your keywords in the title, sub-titles and in the content of your blog (especially the first paragraph)
- making the copy on the page easy to read
- inserting keywords into meta-descriptions and the long-form URL of your page
- cross-linking and adding outbound links
- insert keywords into the title, alt-tag and descriptions of any media on the page
Again Yoast SEO for WordPress is helpful for this because it allows you to see exactly what your search engine results will look like as you fix titles and descriptions; which is often a perspective we don’t think of.
This makes you look better to the Google robots who are assessing your SEO standing, but more importantly, makes you look better to potential customers reading their search engine results.
Building Back Links
The more links pointing to your blog from other websites, the more authoritative search engines consider you and your content to be.
You can help things along by inserting your own internal links between your blog posts and pages (aka cross-linking), but gaining quality external links adds extra oomph to your SEO strategy.
Building backlinks involves connecting with other websites to help expand your reach. Do a bit of research to work out which consumer sites or influencers rate highly in your niche, and then approach them to guest blog or set up some sort of cross-promotion. Appearing on podcasts or events, commenting on other blogs, being referenced in external articles all contribute to building your profile with back-links.
You can also add your own links to other websites, such as relevant studies or helpful products for your customers. This improves SEO as well.
Reviews
Online reviews are an important piece of the SEO puzzle, and should be of considerable interest whether you are interested in SEO or not.
Positive reviews increase traffic from search results, and carry some weight in local search results. Positive reviews also highlight to the Google robot that your product/service/business is of high quality and therefore should be ranked higher.
Traffic
The last piece of the SEO puzzle is traffic. Without traffic your awesome content, product or business is not being seen, and no-one wants that.
What is traffic? Traffic is the flow of (real) visitors to your website.
If you have Google Analytics active on your website, you can see how much traffic you have currently by looking at the number of Sessions and Users. You can also check out the sources of your traffic. Click here for more info about the 10 Basic Performance Metrics To Monitor In Google Analytics.
If your blog post or website is getting good traffic, the search engines will deem your content higher quality and of interest to the public, therefore will index your content higher in the results so that more people to see it.
One of the best ways to boost traffic and increase your rankings organically is content marketing. I’ve also included a handful of other ideas to help you drive more traffic to your website in this post here and this one here.
PLUS more traffic = more opportunity for conversion. But more on that another day…
Where to from here?
These are the base pillars to get you started with SEO. Not gonna lie, SEO can be time-consuming, never-ending, and is most definitely a long-game strategy (so the sooner you start the better). It’s absolutely 100% worth the investment (I have built several businesses using SEO alone, no advertising and minimal social media), but if you need leads TODAY search engine optimisation is not what you need, however I believe it’s good to integrate in your daily practices now so that 6-12 months from now you start seeing the return.
Still think SEO belongs in the “too hard” basket? Here are some options to get you started…
- Book a DIY SEO training session with me and I’ll walk you through the steps to get you started.
- Get a solid understanding of the basic principles and how to apply them for your business in the SEO Basics for Beginners eCourse.
- Rather leave it to an expert? Get in touch with me as I’ve got some stellar done-for-you SEO packages that will have you ranking in no time!
Note: This post includes affiliate links which means that if you make a purchase, we will receive a small thank you commission at no additional cost to you. This does not impact our reviews and comparisons – we only recommend tools we have used extensively and love!
SEO starts with keywords, and popularity of those keywords (because optimising for a term that no-one is searching for wont get you very far).
All SEO assessments need to have a point of reference to get their bearings. Plugins will check to see how well you rate, but they need to know the keywords you are trying to rank for, AND you need to be optimising for keywords that are worth ranking for in the first place.
Having more thoughtful, targeted keywords is a good place to start.
Keywords that are:
- slightly longer (aka long-tail keywords)
- more specific to your audience (talk their language)
- act on user intent (ie. people looking for information “how to…”, people looking to buy “buy online/shop/in my area”)
- have search volume (people actually looking for this term)
Considering all of this to find your target keywords will ultimately create better conversion.
So if you sell hand paintings of the ocean, you would do better optimising for a keyword like ‘buy ocean scenes artwork online’ than just optimising for ‘cows’ or ‘charcoal drawings’.
Why? Because anyone searching for just “cows” could be looking for a whole range of things from farm gear through to novelty items or actual cows! Anyone searching for ‘cow artworks online’ is specifically looking for artwork of cows. See the difference in why the second would result in more clicks (and sales) for you?
Hot Tip: Optimising for local search will yield faster results than broad, target everyone everywhere, keywords.
Blogging for Business
To rank well in search engine results your content needs to be relevant, interesting and authoritative. Search engines have ways of working out if you fit these criteria without a little man at Google having to read every single online page on to give a subjective opinion. Instead they have robots who we have to impress instead.
You can improve the SEO of your blog content by:
- having longer blog posts, that are at least 1000 words long
- adding new blogs or content to your website regularly
- writing content that is engaging, as well as easily readable
- writing headings that grab people
- optimise your meta title and description to make them more inspiring to click
For more information on this, you may also want to check out our article on how to search engine optimise your blog posts for conversion or download the Ultimate Guide To SEO For Blogging.
On-page Optimisation
You can make a number of changes to your page directly that will increase the quality of your SEO. These include:
- inserting your keywords in the title, sub-titles and in the content of your blog (especially the first paragraph)
- making the copy on the page easy to read
- inserting keywords into meta-descriptions and the long-form URL of your page
- cross-linking and adding outbound links
- insert keywords into the title, alt-tag and descriptions of any media on the page
Again Yoast SEO for WordPress is helpful for this because it allows you to see exactly what your search engine results will look like as you fix titles and descriptions; which is often a perspective we don’t think of.
This makes you look better to the Google robots who are assessing your SEO standing, but more importantly, makes you look better to potential customers reading their search engine results.
Building Back Links
The more links pointing to your blog from other websites, the more authoritative search engines consider you and your content to be.
You can help things along by inserting your own internal links between your blog posts and pages (aka cross-linking), but gaining quality external links adds extra oomph to your SEO strategy.
Building backlinks involves connecting with other websites to help expand your reach. Do a bit of research to work out which consumer sites or influencers rate highly in your niche, and then approach them to guest blog or set up some sort of cross-promotion. Appearing on podcasts or events, commenting on other blogs, being referenced in external articles all contribute to building your profile with back-links.
You can also add your own links to other websites, such as relevant studies or helpful products for your customers. This improves SEO as well.
Reviews
Online reviews are an important piece of the SEO puzzle, and should be of considerable interest whether you are interested in SEO or not.
Positive reviews increase traffic from search results, and carry some weight in local search results. Positive reviews also highlight to the Google robot that your product/service/business is of high quality and therefore should be ranked higher.
Traffic
The last piece of the SEO puzzle is traffic. Without traffic your awesome content, product or business is not being seen, and no-one wants that.
What is traffic? Traffic is the flow of (real) visitors to your website.
If you have Google Analytics active on your website, you can see how much traffic you have currently by looking at the number of Sessions and Users. You can also check out the sources of your traffic. Click here for more info about the 10 Basic Performance Metrics To Monitor In Google Analytics.
If your blog post or website is getting good traffic, the search engines will deem your content higher quality and of interest to the public, therefore will index your content higher in the results so that more people to see it.
One of the best ways to boost traffic and increase your rankings organically is content marketing. I’ve also included a handful of other ideas to help you drive more traffic to your website in this post here and this one here.
PLUS more traffic = more opportunity for conversion. But more on that another day…
Where to from here?
These are the base pillars to get you started with SEO. Not gonna lie, SEO can be time-consuming, never-ending, and is most definitely a long-game strategy (so the sooner you start the better). It’s absolutely 100% worth the investment (I have built several businesses using SEO alone, no advertising and minimal social media), but if you need leads TODAY search engine optimisation is not what you need, however I believe it’s good to integrate in your daily practices now so that 6-12 months from now you start seeing the return.
Still think SEO belongs in the “too hard” basket? Here are some options to get you started…
- Book a DIY SEO training session with me and I’ll walk you through the steps to get you started.
- Get a solid understanding of the basic principles and how to apply them for your business in the SEO Basics for Beginners eCourse.
- Rather leave it to an expert? Get in touch with me as I’ve got some stellar done-for-you SEO packages that will have you ranking in no time!
Note: We only recommend tools we have used extensively and love!
Understand The Problems Your Customers Want To Solve
Todays customers are looking for answers or solutions to a problem they have. That’s why they go online to research you and what you offer.
Their problem might be anything from finding the right accountancy software to the right baby formula – and anything (and everything) in between!
Here’s how it works:
- Your ideal customer searches online for a solution to their problem
- If your business offers something they need (and it’s optimised well for search), it will pop up in their search results
- Your ideal customer visits your website and social media to learn more about you
- They might also cast their research net wider and include discussion forums, review platforms, or any other online channel
Because here’s the catch: only when they feel informed enough about how your business solves their problem, will they make a decision.
So, always remember that your audience researches your business everywhere you show up. Not just on your website.
And Google Analytics is the tool that provides all the data you need to understand this process better.
Drill Into The Data To Find Answers
Quick – can you pinpoint exactly what your customers search for and engage with on your channels? To start to understand this, use your Google Analytics data to answer these questions:
- What websites do people visit before coming to your website?
- Where do they land on your website? For example, do they come straight to the home page or via a blog post that caught their attention?
- Once your audience is on your website, where do they go once they leave the first page?
Regardless of what you find, remember they’re doing one thing: looking for solutions to their problem.
There are many other clues you can find, as well, like:
- What comment or social media directed them to you? This can give you an idea of what their query was.
- Does the page they landed on (such as a blog post), keep them engaged for a long time? Or does it have a high bounce rate? If they bounce quickly, it may mean the blog post wasn’t exactly what they were looking for.
Follow the journey of your customers to see how they engage with you before buying. Use this information to start building out content that attracts and keeps visitors on the page longer.
And always be transparent in how you market content so you get the right people to your website. Traffic may drop, but the customers who are genuinely interested in your products and services will keep coming.
Analytics Can Model Trends And Patterns And Help Plan For The Unexpected
We briefly mentioned patterns above, but let’s talk about it a bit more. Because Google Analytics is a great way to find patterns and spot trends.
And tracking patterns and trends is essential to gain a deeper understanding of what’s happening in your business. Analytics can provide you with more than just data on customer and audience behaviours. It can reflect your industry and the economy.
And with your finger on the pulse of what’s happening, you can be more strategic in your business.
Market trends are influenced by buying habits, so looking at the wider landscape can help you see where the lulls and highs are. Map out your business against past trends and patterns to help your business perform well in the future.
For example, if you know Christmas is a big month for you and January will be lean, you can adjust your business activities accordingly. This is all part and parcel of running a successful business that is flexible to the needs of their customers.
Remember we said earlier that customer-centric businesses always have customers at the heart of everything they do?
Well, it’s exactly why …
… It’s Time To Pay Attention To What Your Customers Are Doing
In a study by Accenture, 79% of business executives agreed that companies that fail to embrace big data will lose their competitive position and could face extinction. The study also found that 83% of business executives who have implemented big data projects gained a competitive edge.
So you can see that using data to plan your business strategy is essential. When you have a projection of what’s going to happen, you can prepare for most eventualities.
And this also means you can gain an edge on your competitors by launching your campaign first, becoming more appealing to customers, and preventing any issues that may arise.
Don’t Delay, Start Your Data Journey Today!
Have we convinced you that Google Analytics is an essential tool in your business management toolbox?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Data is your friend! And using Google Analytics is the perfect way to plan for growth by following what the data says about your business and customers.
So, what can Google Analytics tell you about your business? Maybe the question should be – what “can’t” it tell you?
To get started mining your data so you can optimise and grow your business, download our free Beginners Guide to Google Analytics here.
Or, if you’d just like someone else to take care of it for you, book a free 30 Discovery call. We’d love to help you streamline your business, provide customer insight, and reach your potential.
