Changes in the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) mean it’s now getting much more difficult for Brighton businesses to maintain the search engine rankings of their websites.
Google’s algorithm updates like Panda, Penguin and more recently Hummingbird mean that the old ways of ‘tricking’ the search engines into displaying your site highly in their results are well and truly gone, never to return.
Personally we think this is excellent news! Those old ‘black hat’ practices did not produce top quality results and rarely gave the searcher what they were looking for.
Google has always said that their main goal is to deliver top quality results to their searchers. If your Brighton Business website is to feature in the top results you now need to think about optimising your entire web presence – not just your website. Good SEO is a long term investment in both good quality content on your own website and your social profiles.
If you want a quick, but temporary fix go down the PPC (Paid Search) route – we can help you with this. Organic SEO is the way to go for sustained business success online.
Here are our 5 tips for an effective SEO strategy in 2014
1. Keyword and Competitor Research
Thorough keyword research is absolutely essential for any successful SEO strategy. You need to discover which generic keywords convert well in addition to your own branded ones. Consider looking at the generic keywords your competitors are ranking for.
2. Get the on-page SEO basics right
The technical basics need to be in place on your website from the beginning. The website structure, load speed, ease of navigation and the overall user experience all play their part in how the search engines rank your site. Responsive design has now become a major factor with more and more web visitors accessing your website via a mobile phone or tablet. How does your website look on a mobile phone?
3. Optimise your content marketing
Every successful SEO campaign must now include content marketing. This means you have to produce frequent, good quality content optimised for the search terms you want to be found for. Make it easy for your target audience to find the information they are looking for. This will actually make the buying process easier for them. The very best e-commerce websites make it super easy to buy – does yours?
4. Publish, Share and be Social!
Publish your content and then make sure you make people aware of it by sharing and distributing it through your social channels. The social signals produced from social media channels can improve your chances of being found. Using social channels can also spread your content far and wide. Being socially active is good for SEO.
5. Measure and improve
A regular critical review and analysis of the campaign is vital. Set or agree benchmarks and objectives to be achieved and review your results against them. Good SEO is not just about where you rank for a certain keyword phrase anymore – it is about the number of visitors to your website and the number of those people that convert to sales / customers. All SEO influencers must be taken into account when assessing performance of your campaign including not just your our keywords search rank position but also the number of backlinks pointing to your website, number of organic visits and time spent on your site, social signals and conversions. All are essential in helping you make the right online marketing decisions for your business. Keeping an eye on what’s happening with the data will help you decide what you should do next in your SEO strategy.
As a web-savvy Brighton business owner you may already be changing your approach to SEO, but if you are not then you could find yourself slipping further and further down the search engine results.
Did your business drop off Google’s radar following a recent update? What have you started doing to get yourself back on track?
If you want to move your online business strategy forward and need help or more information, please get in touch or if preferred leave a message below.