SEO Tips For New Websites
You’ve launched your new website, ready to welcome crowds of new customers. But, if no one finds your new website, how will they see what you have to offer? It will take time for your website to become established on the internet and start attracting visitors.
Search engine optimisation has been such an essential topic for site owners for over 20 years. A lot has changed in the world of Search Engine Optimization and there’s currently a lot of SEO tips out there.
Organic traffic is the lifeblood of many websites. To help your site get better search engine rankings and more traffic much sooner, here are some SEO tips, pointedly chosen with new websites in mind.
Choose Low Competition Keywords on The Outset
When you first launch your site, it will have little authority on Google. For high competition keywords, it will rank lower than well-established competitors. Whilst there is nothing to stop you from targeting competitive keywords, it is best to designate less competitive ones. This is the quickest way to generate new traffic for your site.
You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to check how competitive a keyword you would like to use is. This tool will show the competition for the term as high, medium or low. Finding less competitive keywords gives you a higher chance of ranking for them and getting traffic to flow in your site when you are just starting.
Write for Humans First, Search Engines Second
Lately, more and more bloggers and content creators are going back to the old method of SEO. This method saw the use of keywords meant to drive search results surpass the absolute qualities of engaging, valuable and user-gratifying content.
Many new websites tend to hold keywords in such high regard that they forget the prime purpose of writing. Search spiders are just scripts. They don’t buy products, they don’t engage with you on social media, and they won’t become a loyal customer.
Don’t prioritize search engines over the actual humans reading your work. Instead, write content for the user, people who have eyes to read and credit cards to purchase your product.
Check Out Your Competitors
This is another valuable SEO tactic. Try to look at what your competitors are ranking for. Go to one of the tools you use to check out your rankings, but key in a competitor domain. You’ll quickly see what terms are generating traffic for their sites. From there, you can take the best for yourself.
If you don’t know who your competition is, search for some of your most important keyword targets. Take a look at the sites that consistently rank well. Again, don’t try to target a keyword just because a competitor is ranking well for it. Make sure that the keyword is highly relevant to your site and audience.
If well utilised, this is a quick and effective way to use your competitors’ work to uncover audience interests.
Use Better Title Tags
Search engines use title tags to determine the subject matter of each page or post on your website. Also, the title tag is one of the first things users see on your site.
The title tag is displayed as the blue link in search results. It is also the main heading when a page is shared on social media. You can make your title tags better by:
- Adding your main keyword to show search engines what the page is about. When someone searches for that term, search engines will see that your page has relevant content and present it to the user. You should also make sure that you include your keyword in the page’s meta description.
- Building interesting titles that grab the readers’ attention. Standing out in the search results can help earn you extra clicks. Of course, achieving this depends on your audience and the type of page in question. A product description page and a blog post will have very different title tags.
Go through all your pages and look at your titles. Are you making the most of your keywords? And are they as interesting and suitable as possible? If not, you need to change your approach towards title tags as this will increase your traffic.
Have Sensible URLs
When creating new pages, making your URLs short, readable and keyword-rich is a simple way to make the most of them. If users can’t read or understand your URL, then search engines may be confused as well.
Granted, the URL may be long, but as long as it’s easy to understand for both users and search engines, you are good to go. There are a few guiding principles, such as using hyphens instead of underscores and adding your primary keyword especially in the first few words. If possible, keeping them short and simple while reflecting site hierarchy is best.
One common mistake is using auto-generated URLs. These will work perfectly fine technically, but considering your audience, you should go for something more descriptive. Just as is the case with title tags, the reader wants to have an idea of what’s on the page just by reading the URL.
Improve Your Content
Look at the content you have for your page. Does it fully cover the topic in question? Does it address all the relevant keyword variations you can find? Does it address common audience questions? Is it engaging?
Search engines love quality content, so you need to make your page as good as possible each time. Look at who is ranking well for your target keywords. How can you create a resource that is much better?
Keep Your Website Fresh
Search engines promote websites that are updated regularly with new or refreshed content. If you’ve got a new website, you won’t have anything that needs updating straight away but it can be a big help, SEO-wise, to add new content regularly.
If you have just set up a new website, hopefully, the tips given in this post will have shown you some of the ways to get your site a perfect start in search engines. Your website should start ranking in search engine results and above all, get clicked by searchers.
How To Create The Perfect SEO Keyword Strategy
While Google keeps us on our toes with all the algorithm updates they keep rolling out, one thing has stayed pretty consistent for inbound marketers looking to optimize their websites for search, and that is Keyword strategy.
While the need to develop a keyword strategy has stayed the same, how you do it hasn’t. Finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines intending to use that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization, is all that keyword strategies entail.
A modern SEO keyword strategy must focus on intent and how valuable they are to your business. Here are some tips to help you devise and execute a functional keyword strategy that helps you get found for the search terms you care about.
Make a List of Relevant Topics
To kick off this process, think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets. You can come up with about 5-10 topic buckets you think are important and admissible to your content.
If you’re a regular blogger, these are probably the topics you blog about most frequently. Or perhaps they’re the topics that come up the most in sales conversations. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas. What types of topics would your target audience search for? Those are the topics that you’d want your business to get found for.
Find Your Keywords
- Keyword research is usually the most important step towards achieving a legit SEO strategy. You can’t do much without knowing what keywords your target market is using to find solutions to the problems that your company solves.
Using the topics noted in the first step, you will need to get keywords. This requires a little research. You need to step inside the shoes of the potential customer of your product or service. How would you find solutions to your problem? What would you search for in your search engine?
One of the best ways to find fitting keywords is by using Google Suggest. To do this just start typing a keyword into Google’s search field, and it will populate a list of suggestions. These usually make great keywords for SEO because they come straight from Google.
This means you know for sure that people are searching for them. Plus, longer keywords, known as long-tail keywords, tend to be less competitive than “short tail” terms.
For example:
– SEO – is a single word search phrase.
– Ecommerce SEO Services is 2-3 word search phrase.
– SEO Services Company in London is a long-tail keyword.
Type in different keywords until you have an extensive list of other keywords. If you want to check out the search volume and competition levels for those terms, you can use a keyword tool such as Ubersuggest.
Factors For Choosing Keywords
You cannot just choose keywords and expect your content to rank for them, you must curate keywords for:
- Relevance
Google ranks content for relevance. This is where the concept of search intent comes in. Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the readers’ needs. In addition, your content must be the best resource out there for the query. After all, why would Google rank your content higher if it provides less value than other content that exists on the web?
- Authority
Google will provide more weight to sources it deems authoritative. That means you must do all you can in terms of keywords to become an authoritative source by enriching your site with helpful, informative content and promoting that content to earn social signals and backlinks.
- Volume
You may end up ranking on the first page for a specific keyword, but if no one ever searches for it, it will not result in traffic to your site. Kind of like setting up shop in a ghost town.
Analyze Google's First Page
So you have already found a handful of keywords. Now it’s time to see who already ranks for those keywords. To do that, just type one of the words that you found into Google.
Scan the top ten results and jot down any patterns that you notice. For example, you may notice that the first page results are predominantly frequented by list posts. If you wanted to cover that topic on your site, you’d probably want to publish a list post.
Research Related Search Terms
This is a creative step you may have already thought of when doing keyword research. If not, it’s a great way to fill out those keyword lists.
If you’re struggling to think of more keywords people might be searching about a specific topic, take a look at the related search terms that appear when you plug in a keyword into Google. When you type in your phrase and scroll to the bottom of Google’s results, you’ll notice some suggestions for searches related to your original input. These keywords can spark ideas for other keywords you may want to take into consideration.
Use Keyword Research Tools To Your Advantage
Keyword research and SEO tools such as SEMrush, and Ubersuggest can help you put forward more keyword ideas based on exact match keywords and phrase match keywords based on the ideas you’ve generated up to this point. This exercise might give you alternatives that you might not have considered.
SEO tools also work to your advantage if you’d like to find how competitive your keywords are.
Create Something Different or Better
You already have your keywords. Now it’s time to create some super high-quality content. Sometimes you want to forge something bigger and better than what’s out there but other times it’s better to create something different from what’s there. The key here is to use your marketing spidey sense and create engaging content that is valuable to your target market.
Valuable content includes content that answers the questions that your buyers have, provides them with insights they can use and educates them so they can be better at what they do. The right keyword strategy helps your content stand out. Your aim should always be to create something that’s simply better than what’s already ranking on the first page of Google?
Bonus Tip: Be sure you don’t overlook your pages’ URLs because they’re important for your SEO. This is where your keyword research comes in handy. Using the most common and most searched appropriate keywords in your URL is a sure way of generating traffic for your site. If you are not conversant with keyword strategies, you can seek SEO training and courses created and delivered by Clickslice. These will come in handy in handling all your SEO problems.
7 Ways to Improve Your Online Presence
Building a solid online presence is imperative in the digital age.
It’s where your customers are finding you. Even if your core service requires a brick-and-mortar establishment, individuals will turn to the internet to discover your company.
Here’s precisely why and how you should approach solidifying your brand’s online identity.
What Is an Online Presence?
Put simply, if a business can be found anywhere on the internet, it has an online presence.
A robust online presence generally consists of an excellent website and fascinating social media accounts. Investing in your online branding in the early stages of your business can skyrocket your success.
More often than not, a business will have an online presence regardless of whether they are actively creating one.
Can your customers find you on Google Maps? Can they geotag on Instagram? Or leave a review on TripAdvisor? If any of these apply, then you already have the foundations of an online reputation.
Why You Need an Online Presence
Most businesses will struggle to achieve great success without an excellent online brand.
Because viewers convert to customers.
So, the most profitable businesses spend a great deal of time and money, developing an excellent website and engaging social media accounts. Providing customers with valuable information helps to build trust and shows readers that your product or service is the best around.
A strong online presence makes your business more credible, accessible, and helps to support the overall branding.
7 Ways to Improve Your Online Presence
A Flawless Website
A flawless website is the fastest way to show the integrity of your brand.
First and most obviously, the website needs to look incredible and accurately represent your business. A website is a crucial building block in your overall branding, so the aesthetic must encompass your company identity.
Next, the website should function without fault. It should be fast to load and free of broken links. Customers will quickly leave a website that is full of glitches or slow to load.
Finally, your website must be discoverable. Unfortunately, most people never venture further than the first page of Google, with the majority clicking on one of the top three links. Therefore, you must implement a robust SEO strategy to enable potential customers to find your website.
Consider Your Platforms
Building a social media presence is the next building block for your online company.
However, especially in the early stages of your business, mastering all of the platforms is near impossible. The options include Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok, requiring written, image, and video content combinations. Attempting to provide your audience will value on each of these will undoubtedly be unsuccessful.
Spend time considering the content that fits your brand and focus on one or two platforms. For fun, snappy video content, opt for Instagram and Tik Tok. On the other hand, if words are more your vibe, Twitter or even LinkedIn may be preferable. Pinterest is perfect for infographics and beautiful imagery, and the platform is well known for excellent click-through rates.
Create Shareable Content
One of the best, organic ways to reach whole new customer bases is to create shareable content. Essentially, your readers will then do the marketing for you, sharing your blogs or social media posts to their followings.
However, you should be aware that there is a very fine line between enticing content and clickbait. Whilst headlines may draw people in (especially on social media), only valuable, interesting content will lead to shares.
Infographics work exceptionally well and can be created easily as an addition to your long form work.
Quality Over Quantity
When building your brand online, it’s easy to get bogged down with the numbers.
Reaching 100 website page views per day, or 10,000 Twitter followers, can feel like the key to success. But this is not necessarily the case.
The trick is to engage genuine customers, who are likely to convert to sales. This can, however, be especially difficult for service-based businesses, where location is crucial. For example, a viewer in Edinburgh will not utilise a hairdresser offering their services in Manchester.
This is where local SEO becomes even more critical. When search engines precisely understand where you are based, they can show you to your ideal customer base.
Network
Building a relationship with other businesses and social media influencers can be a great way to get yourself noticed online.
Social media users are wise to constant paid for advertisements, which can look try-hard at best, and tacky at worst. Also, affiliating your company with another brand that doesn’t align with your beliefs can have serious repercussions later down the line.
However, authentic relationships will hugely help with your online presence. You will undoubtedly notice a flurry of additional viewers if another company mentions and links to your website.
Ensure you are reciprocating and keeping open communication channels to allow these relationships to organically blossom.
Build a Mailing List
You can build a mailing list by taking the email address of your customers (with their consent) and storing them in a database. This helps create a personable relationship between yourself and the customer, allowing them exclusive insights into new products and sales.
Every email sent to these customers increases the chance of them heading directly to your website and making a sale. Ensure there is a call to action on every email issued, and monitor the response from your customers to help figure out which tactics work best for your audience.
Work With A Dedicated Agency
Here at ClickSlice, our expertise is getting brands noticed online. We are SEO fanatics, aiming to boost your search engine rankings, drive new readers to your site, and convert them into customers.
We pride ourselves on being consistent, using data-driven and reliable techniques that have proved successful time and time again.
For a no-obligation chat about building your online presence, contact our friendly team today on 020 3287 3638 or hello@clickslice.co.uk.
Why You Should Hire an SEO Agency
Deciding to work with an external SEO company is a big move for any business.
It can be a struggle to place your trust in another team, with many business owners believing that keeping optimisation in-house is the best move.
Of course, an in house SEO expert is hugely beneficial, but this article will explore the many advantages of outsourcing your SEO work to an agency.
What Does An SEO Agency Do?
The purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to increase your brand’s online visibility.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to SEO, and a great agency will take a rounded approach that aligns with the company’s goals.
An SEO agency will look at the technical aspects of your website, including elements such as page speed and mobile usability. They will then look at your on-page SEO, optimising and developing content that helps your website rank above your competitors.
Depending on your company’s needs, you may also choose to explore international SEO, which can hugely benefit E-commerce companies looking to break into new markets.
SEO Agencies Are Results Driven
At the outset of your relationship, you will discuss exactly what you are hoping to gain from the partnership with your chosen agency. From here, strategies can be developed, and results will be regularly provided.
Meaning, you will be able to see first-hand the immediate outcomes their techniques have created.
Of course, the goal of SEO is to drive organic traffic to your website. But, the whole purpose of this traffic spike is to increase the number of sales your company makes.
Put simply; excellent SEO implementation will improve your bottom line.
They Have The Tools
Auditing your website and the website of your competitors takes a significant number of tools and resources. Whilst some resources are free, the best are those that require annual memberships, which your chosen agency will undoubtedly have.
Alongside these tools to kickstart your SEO campaign, great agencies will have access to programmes that monitor your progress, checking you are on track to hitting those goals every step of the way.
SEO Agencies Are Cost-Effective
Working with an SEO agency is a significant investment.
SEO is a holistic service that starts with a detailed website audit, analyses your competitors, and develops on-page and off-page optimisation strategies. These are highly skilled services, and therefore, agencies charge a premium.
However, the focus should always be on providing a significant return on your investment.
Consider the impact of your organic internet traffic multiplying by 500. The whole focus of SEO is to drive your genuine target market to your website, so these additional views will be by legitimate customers ready to purchase your products. In comparison to the monthly outlay for the SEO services, this extra income will be astronomical.
To Dominate the Local Market
SEO agencies can be particularly beneficial for service-based, local companies.
Local SEO is the process of optimising your website to ensure your brand is visible to those in the vicinity. For example, if you’re a window cleaner based in Bournemouth, there is little point in a client in Newcastle discovering your services.
Local SEO is complex and requires implementation from many different angles to succeed.
Unrivalled Experience and Knowledge
SEO is a full-time job. However, taking on a staff member to cover these elements of your business might not be feasible for you at this current time.
While you may choose to invest in in-house training and courses, working with an agency will provide the rapid results that your company craves, using tried and tested methods.
To Gain a Competitive Edge
Think about your biggest competitor. And now imagine ranking above them for every search in your niche.
This is not an easy task – especially if you are a relatively new business and they are an established company. However, through innovative research and robust strategies, there is no reason customers cannot find your website above the rest.
Once on your website, your excellent content will show them exactly why they should purchase your product or service.
It Provides Accountability
Most businesses are aware of the enormous impact SEO can have.
It is often added to to-do lists and left there for months on end. Understandably, businesses have other elements to focus on, and Search Engine Optimisation falls by the wayside.
However, a dedicated agency will research, plan, and implement a strategy. Your monthly and yearly goals will be regularly revised, and analysis will be conducted periodically to check you are on track.
An Objective Perspective
Most companies believe their website and social media presence is fantastic.
However, an agency will view your work objectively, removing the emotional connection you have with your brand.
This will allow the agency to revise every element of your website. From the framework that it sits upon to the content that your customers enjoy. They will use data to focus on the strategies that attract the greatest number of customers and eliminate the techniques that are not currently working for your company.
Knowledge is Power
Outsourcing your SEO might not be the long-term plan for your company. However, working with an agency is a great way to kickstart your business growth and allows you to see the masters at work.
After witnessing the phenomenal results that excellent SEO can bring, you may decide to invest in an SEO course for your team. SEO training allows your team to replicate some techniques used by the agency and gives a solid understanding of why these strategies are so important.
Choosing The Right Team
When choosing an SEO agency, your goals must be clear from the outset. This way, agencies can explain the strategies they will implement to help you meet your targets.
Of course, you should choose an agency with a proven track record. They should provide clear examples of the methods they implement and how these make a difference to companies’ revenue. Testimonials are also great and give a personable insight into the effects of SEO.
At ClickSlice, we specialise in designing and implementing successful SEO campaigns, always focusing on providing a return on your investment. To find out how we can transform your business, contact us today on 020 3287 3638 or email us at hello@clickslice.co.uk.
