Meet us at the IRX & eDX Expo: Learn more here
Many businesses have a smaller audience and sell their products or services locally as opposed to nationwide or globally. In these instances, local SEO becomes an especially important tool so that you can capitalize on your immediate customers – the customers who are most likely to use your business.
The best way to get started with this is by conducting a local SEO audit and this is what I explore in the below guide. You will learn what this process involves, and the key steps to make sure that all areas of your local SEO strategy are examined so that you can make improvements going forward.
In the ever-evolving digital landscape, local businesses must stay ahead in the online race and this often means beating the competition and gaining dominance in your local area.
A Local SEO Audit is a vital tool to achieve this and ensures your business stands out in local searches. It involves a thorough examination of various aspects that impact your online visibility, helping you pinpoint areas for improvement.
These aspects are concentrated in your local area which is typically defined as the area surrounding your premises, or the areas within a specific radius where you serve customers.
A top London SEO consultant can help conduct a thorough local SEO audit using their expert knowledge of SEO practices. However, to get you started, I have created a simple step-by-step guide to follow.
The foundation of a robust local SEO strategy is solid keyword research. Identify the terms your potential customers are using to find businesses like yours. Are you targeting the right keywords? Ensure relevance, search volume, and local intent align.
Your website is your online storefront. Evaluate its structure, content, and performance. Is it user-friendly? Optimize your site for local searches, ensuring accurate business information, clear contact details, and relevant local content. Consider things like page loading times, mobile optimization, and the availability of info too which contribute to UX and UI satisfaction.
Your Google Business Profile is a digital storefront on Google Maps and it’s free to complete so every company should do it! Verify your information, add accurate business hours, and choose relevant categories for your services. Also encourage customers to leave reviews, as they can significantly impact your local search rankings.
Online mentions and local citations play a crucial role in local SEO. Ensure your business information is consistent across directories, websites, and social media platforms. Any discrepancies could affect your search engine rankings. Customers could also find conflicting information confusing and as a result, their trust in your abilities could be diminished.
Customer reviews are social proof that can sway potential customers so it’s important to regularly monitor and respond to reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and others. Address concerns, express gratitude for positive feedback, and demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction. This can be done as part of your local SEO audit, but also on an ongoing basis.
Analytics provide valuable insights into your website’s local performance. Track organic traffic, user behavior, and conversions. Also, identify pages with high bounce rates and optimize them for better engagement. Analyzing data helps refine your local SEO strategy.
Google Analytics is one of the best platforms to use for your local SEO audit as it provides the metrics I mentioned above, plus a heap more that you can utilize.
Examining local SEO competitors can provide valuable insights too. Identify their strengths and weaknesses in local SEO. Analyze their keywords, content strategies, and backlink profiles.
You can then use this information to refine your own strategy and stand out in local searches. Also, if they do have areas of weakness, you can look to capitalize on them and jump into the void.
Several tools can streamline the local SEO audit process. I advise looking for free tools first as there are many available and they can help improve your local SEO without hampering your budget. Examples of fantastic local SEO tools include:
These tools cover a range of processes including keyword analysis, local performance, local visibility, and review management. You can check out my guide on the best local SEO tools for more information.
After conducting a comprehensive local SEO audit, compile your findings. Prioritize action items based on their impact on your online visibility. Implement changes to your website, Google Business Profile, and other online platforms as necessary. Regularly monitor and adjust your strategy as needed.
It’s important to realize that this isn’t just a one-time occurrence and local SEO audits should be conducted frequently. The key is to continually assess and improve your strategy so that you are always one step ahead of your local competitors.
In the competitive world of local business, a well-executed local SEO strategy can make all the difference. By conducting regular audits and staying proactive, you ensure that your business stays visible and accessible to your local audience.
Take the time to assess your online presence, make necessary adjustments, and watch your business thrive in local searches. Remember, the digital landscape is dynamic, and so should your approach to local SEO. Stay informed, stay optimized, and stay ahead of the competition. Your local customers are searching – make sure they find you first!
For smaller businesses, local SEO is incredibly important as it allows you to tap into your immediate demographic and those customers who are most likely to use your services and/or products. This isn’t something that blossoms automatically though and the process can be helped with the local SEO tools I explain below.
So why bother with local SEO? Any leading SEO consultant in London or around the world will tell you how beneficial this process is and it offers a range of benefits including:
By implementing a local SEO campaign you make sure that your marketing efforts are reaching the right people. What good are keywords if the people searching for them live in the opposite part of the country and would never use your services due to geographical limitations?
Local SEO makes sure that you capitalize on customers in your immediate area – those people that are most likely to use your company.
To get you started with local SEO I have given a range of tools that cover the main areas. This includes listing management, review management, business listings, and local analytics tracking.
Semrush Listing Management has several useful features including the ability to manage your business listings and sort your online reviews. The listing management feature is comprehensive and easy to understand and it tracks listings on platforms like Yelp, Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Foursquare for example.
The review management tool is especially useful too in managing your local business reputation. It collates your reviews and gives you metrics like an overall star rating. You can also reply to reviews directly without even leaving the platform.
Georanker is an incredible website that allows you to see how your company is performing on a global scale. That could be a little irrelevant for your business though, but Georanker also allows you to look at your ranking and performance locally.
You can create heatmaps to show how you are fairing against local competitors but there is also a host of information relating to keyword usage and other analytics.
Tracking your performance on search engines is incredibly important but so is your performance on things like local business directories and review platforms. Synup allows you to do this and has an active monitoring system that checks over 200 search engines, directories, and platforms.
You can use the reports to check activity and leads, but also look for errors in your business listings and quickly make sure everything is up to date. Like Semrush, Synup also allows you to manage business reviews and respond to comments to boost your social engagement and credibility.
Local Falcon offers a more specific benefit relating to local keyword usage. The premise is simple – you enter one of the local keywords you are using together with a scan radium from your business location in KM and a grid size.
A search is then run and Local Falcon provides detailed information relating to that keyword in the specified geographical location. This is excellent for local targeting as you can see where the most business is coming from among other information. The visual approach with Google Maps makes it easy to understand and look for keyword trends.
Before investing in paid tools and advanced local SEO tools the first thing you should do is to create your Google Business Profile. GBP is a free service and it’s a fantastic starting point that can instantly enhance your local SEO.
With the GBP you can enter a range of info and the more you can complete, the more your business stands out to local customers. This includes things like customer reviews, images, videos, opening hours, etc.
Google Analytics is a free tool and every local business should register an account. It can also be used in conjunction with platforms like Google Ads if you want to start a PPC campaign. Google Analytics is great for understanding local SEO fundamentals and it provides a wealth of metrics and reports that you can use to look at your local customers and how they are using your website.
Local SEO tools aren’t suitable for every business and you must do a little planning and research beforehand. Some considerations to make include:
I recommend starting with free tools such as Google Business Profile and Google Analytics. These are easy to use, won’t eat into your budget, and can yield great results.
After that, you have to look at your budget and where your business stands in terms of its local SEO progression. Over time, look to implement the above tools as local SEO becomes more important as part of your overall SEO strategy.
To fashion a successful local SEO campaign you have to incorporate the use of local SEO tools into your repertoire. These tools give you useful information and targeted analytics, and allow you to manage your local SEO effectively including things like reviews, listings, and keyword research.
In business, it’s common to have different departments for different processes and look at business aspects separately. But wouldn’t it be fantastic if processes could synergize and you could kill two birds with one stone? (not that anyone wants to kill birds!)
This is exactly the case with PR and SEO and as you will see below, these two important business processes have a natural synergy which means you can reduce your workload while boosting your public image and SEO with a single strategy or campaign.
Before we look at specific strategies, it’s vital to understand the interplay and how PR and SEO work together or share common grounds.
Simply put, certain SEO processes can also have a positive impact on your public image, and similarly, certain PR campaigns positively impact your SEO. For example, if you manage to get an article published in a media outlet to create a backlink and insert keywords, your PR image also naturally increases because your company name is out there and seen on a respected website.
Similarly, if you forge a connection with an influencer, you can benefit from backlinks and images relating to your products which are fantastic for SEO. In the same instance, association with the influencer and the built-in audience they have can do wonders for your image and PR.
The processes involved in PR and SEO naturally complement each other and often boost both business practices. Hence, you have to keep this in mind and utilize it when creating your PR SEO strategies.
So, we can see that PR SEO is real, and the two processes intermingle. But what specific strategies can you use that boost both your PR and SEO efforts and allow you to create a more effective and streamlined marketing campaign?
Backlinks are the primary strategy that works for both PR and SEO and you can easily fit them in different PR content. A current digital PR trends analysis shows that things like journalist articles, influencers, and high-authority published content work wonders, and these are all places where high-quality backlinks can be strategically inserted.
You should make sure that the links are high-quality and that they are inserted into the PR content correctly but when done so, they can contribute to your SEO campaign.
Within your SEO campaigns, you should aim to continually get brand mentions and get your name out there through your different marketing channels. The more your brand is mentioned (positively), the more your PR image is boosted.
Just make sure the emphasis is on positive brand mentions unless you want to take the route of any publicity is good publicity which some businesses have proven can work.
Social media doesn’t have a direct impact on SEO rankings and search engines like Google have said as such. However, it indirectly boosts SEO via backlinks and customer engagement. Social media is also a superb PR tool as it’s one of the few places you can interact directly with customers on a one-to-one level.
As part of your professional PR solutions and SEO strategies, you could build your social media following. I advise concentrating only on a couple of platforms initially as opposed to trying to gain a following on every site. The aim is to build your audience, be active with your posting and replies, and craft an online persona and presence that boosts your PR and benefits your SEO.
A tried and tested PR tool is to create relationships with influencers and journalists but this also naturally boosts your SEO due to keyword usage, engagement, and backlinks in the content these people publish.
For example, let’s say that you reach out to an influencer and create a deal where they promote your products on Instagram and their website. Each time they post about your company either on their site or social media, backlinks are typically used which is great for SEO and your reputation.
You can stipulate how the links should be used and the anchor text the influencer must use so that they complement your SEO campaign in the right way.
Content marketing is especially effective for SEO and PR and many processes under this umbrella could contribute to your PR SEO strategy including:
When crafting your content marketing strategy you should approach it from the dual aspect of PR and SEO and create goals for both business processes. You can then use individual processes such as video content and blogs to improve both functions.
For example, podcasts can be excellent PR tools as they provide insight into your business, show your character, and allow listeners to build trust and engagement with your company. In the same instance, podcasts as part of a content marketing strategy can boost SEO including the use of backlinks and even audio keywords.
You rarely get two business processes that synergize and PR and SEO do, so you have to take advantage and create strategies that boost both processes. While improving your SEO with things like backlinks, high-authority articles, and content marketing, you are also building your brand reputation and exposure as part of your PR campaign.
Two especially popular marketing processes that thousands of businesses use are SEO and PPC. But is there a clear winner and how does each marketing strategy work? In this guide, I look at the SEO vs PPC argument, compare the two processes, and look at use-case scenarios where one might be better than the other.
To start, it’s important to understand that SEO aims to get website traffic organically from search results, while PPC aims to get traffic from paid searches. This is the core difference and while both processes cost money, PPC has a direct correlation between costs and results, whereas SEO is often less tangible.
SEO is the process of optimizing your website content so that your pages rank highly on search engines like Google when customers search for keywords relating to your business. This includes technical SEO (loading times, sitemaps, robots.txt files, etc.), on-page SEO (keywords, headings, alt-tags, etc.), off-page SEO (creating backlinks), and keyword research.
The aim is to make your website accessible and attractive to search engine crawlers and use keywords in such a way that makes your content appear in SERPs. You must also show Google that your content is appropriate and relevant and should be ranked highly on search results.
Although I maintain that companies can run SEO and PPC campaigns side-by-side, there are instances where one process is better suited than the other and I have listed some common examples below:
If you take one thing from this article, I want it to be that it doesn’t have to be one or the other in the SEO vs PPC battle. Many businesses use both practices successfully and indeed they often overlap and can complement each other. Integrated SEO and PPC solutions can be fantastic and help your marketing efforts shine.
Don’t look at your business processes in a vacuum. Instead, look at how PPC could boost your SEO such as promoting new content and creating more backlinks. And how SEO can boost PPC via things such as keyword research.
The social media explosion shows no signs of slowing down and I guarantee that most people you know will use at least one social media platform daily. This type of exposure, usage, and global appeal has many uses for business including SEO. In this guide, I take a look at the relationship between social media and SEO, how one can boost the other, and the top platforms your business should leverage.
We need to start by being clear on how social media affects SEO because this is something that is often misunderstood. Google and other search engines generally do not use social signals (likes, shares, number of followers, etc.) or social media performance as a ranking factor.
Statistics may show that content with higher social signals ranks higher, but this is just a correlation – not a direct result of the social media performance or engagement. Instead, as you will see below, social media has a range of indirect benefits to your SEO efforts.
Ok, so social media and SEO aren’t intrinsically linked and there is no direct SEO benefit, so why bother? Social media has a fantastic range of indirect benefits that are proven to boost SEO such as via backlink generation, driving traffic, and improving your authority.
London’s top SEO consultant will readily tell you the importance of backlinks as part of a successful SEO campaign and social media can help with this. You can include backlinks to your website and products in your social media posts and the more popular you are on these platforms, the better the backlinks perform – simple.
Insight is an invaluable tool that is often overlooked but social media platforms are some of the best places to gather it. The more information and insight you can gain on current trends, and your customer’s preferences, the better you can tailor your SEO strategies. Social media offers a nearly endless stream of insight – you just have to put in the effort to use it in your SEO campaigns.
Well-written social media posts with engaging content naturally drive traffic to your website which ultimately benefits your SEO. One of the advantages of social media marketing is the ability to make visually appealing posts in a short period of time. This constant stream of content will ultimately drive customers to your website and products/services.
While social media doesn’t directly affect search rankings, it indirectly affects how many people search for your business and products. People who have positive social media interactions with your company are far more likely to search for you on Google which can indirectly drive search traffic.
Authority is a ranking factor involved in SERPs, for example, Google has the EEAT approach (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Therefore, having a large social media following and excellent engagement can boost your authority and show Google that you are indeed a worthwhile business.
Some social media platforms are simply better than others when it comes to SEO mainly due to their popularity, but also due to their content types.
Video content is superb and engaging and YouTube has one of the largest audiences on the internet. YouTube videos often show up in search results and there are also rich snippets that contain the YouTube video thumbnail. Being owned by Google, it stands to reason that YouTube is a popular social media option for SEO.
Instagram is arguably the most popular social media platform and it’s surprising how many people use it for simple searches. Adding SEO keywords to your profile bio and posts can work wonders, as can the strategic use of images and video content.
Although X (formerly known as Twitter) has had somewhat of a hard time recently it still remains an incredibly popular social media platform. Having a large following and a high ranking on X is proven to yield desirable SEO effects. Many people use X to search for companies, trends, and news topics so if your posts rank higher, you can benefit from improved traffic and backlinks.
The popularity of Facebook is somewhat diminished and it could be seen as appealing to an older audience now with the popularity of platforms like TikTok and Instagram. However, if your business typically has an older audience, you can leverage your Facebook following to boost your SEO. There is of course the popular Facebook Ads PPC platform too that is known to yield better conversion rates compared to Google Ads.
TikTok is the social media platform for the younger generations. Many Gen Z kids use TikTok daily and it has become part of their routine including searching for products and companies. For example, research shows that a high percentage of teens use TikTok to search for simple things like where to go for a bite to eat! This exposure with the younger generations is ideal if your business targets that demographic.
Although social media doesn’t impact SEO directly, the indirect benefits shouldn’t be ignored, and utilizing platforms like YouTube, X, and Instagram should be a main part of your SEO and content marketing strategies.
One of the most hotly debated topics in the world of SEO is SEO word count. Experts have spent countless hours trying to come up with complex formulas to determine the ideal number of words for things like blog articles, product pages, and landing pages.
In this guide, I take a look at SEO word count to see if there even is a perfect number of words to strive for, or if other factors like quality are more important (Hint – quality IS more important but there are approximate word count guidelines!).
Let’s first look at whether word count is important or not. I like to think of word count as a guideline, not a strict rule. It is true that there are ideal word counts for different types of content and this can factor into SEO rankings, but content quality is also incredibly important and can take precedence over word count.
The best way to look at this conundrum is to take a joint view. You accept that your website and ecommerce content should adhere to approximate word count guidelines, but that achieving quality means that these word counts are not set in stone and can be over/under.
I can’t give you a set minimum word count for SEO – although people have done studies, it doesn’t exist. Specialist SEO consultants would never do this, so instead, I have listed different content types below with their expected word count ranges.
Product pages should NOT include walls of text. The main emphasis is on the product, its price, and its description. The description should be short, to the point, and leave the customer in no doubt about what it does and what it’s for. Ideally, product pages should be around 300 words.
There is more variance in the length of blog posts and they can range from 300-1500 words. Typically, you will find that most blogs are between 750-1000 words, but this is dependent on the subject and the aim of the blog.
Educational content is typically much longer because of what it wants to achieve. You want to educate someone and give them knowledge so the content has to be detailed. Usually, I would expect educational pieces to be no shorter than 2000 words as Google may question their educational value.
News articles are usually shorter than blog posts and range from 300-500 words depending on the news topic covered. This is because people want their news fast and to be able to digest it quickly – they may even skim-read to pick out the important points.
White papers are another type of long-form content and I would expect these to be no shorter than 2000 words like educational content. Oftentimes white papers will go far beyond this depending on what you are presenting.
Because landing pages aim to make conversions, there usually isn’t a heap of text but instead links and other media. As a result, typically an appropriate length is around 500 words.
The above is a rough guideline on SEO word count but I want to give some tips too relating to how you write your content.
As SEO progresses, it appears that Google is placing more and more emphasis on quality and providing real value to the reader. Therefore, your attention shouldn’t be on hitting the minimum word count for SEO but on giving value. Quality emphasis is something we are seeing in multiple digital marketing areas too such as finding SEO consultants and PR marketing.
For example, your blog articles should always clearly discuss and answer the problem, question, or issue stated in the title. Don’t waste half the article talking about something else just to bump up your word count. Always make sure your content is valuable even if this means a slightly shorter or longer word count than the perceived ideal range.
Fluff is a huge no-no. These are words and sentences that add nothing to the content except to bump up the word count. Words for words sake is not a good idea and this can actually harm your SEO as Google will rate the quality of your content negatively.
If you can answer the topic of your blog article in 500 words, then do so – don’t add another 300 words of fluff because you think it helps SEO – it probably won’t.
Google doesn’t like huge blocks of text without any headings either (and your readers won’t appreciate it either!). Before writing your content, think about how you can break it up into logical sub-sections with a variety of headings. Aside from Google liking this, you can use the headings to insert keywords too!
There is no true best word count for SEO but you can adhere to guidelines and expected averages such as between 500 and 1000 words for blog articles. The main emphasis should always be on the quality of your content as opposed to trying to reach some arbitrary word count.
Make your content engaging, cut out any fluff, use keywords where appropriate, fulfill the purpose of the content, and the word count should be met naturally.
Marketing is a complex beast and there are so many different strategies you can follow. One of the most misunderstood has to be cross-channel marketing and I want to demystify the myths and give you the low down on this type of digital marketing.
Cross-Channel Marketing = The combination of multiple marketing channels to produce a cohesive strategy with channels working together via information sharing to effectively target customers throughout their customer journey.
Let’s look at an example. I like using the example of a gardening supply company for some reason so let’s go with that again! Person A does a Google search for “gardening supplies in London”. They come across your website but ultimately leave without making a purchase.
Later, they happen to be on Facebook and see an ad for your guide to the essential gardening supplies and read the blog. This ends with them signing up for your email newsletter.
The next day they receive a promotional email that contains offers on gardening supplies they happened to browse when on your site. This results in them making a purchase!
You can see here how we have several marketing channels (SEO, Social Media, Email) working together to give the customer the info they need and help them progress along the sales funnel. This is the power of cross-channel marketing and it’s something a company with SEO and PPC professional services can help with.
Do not confuse cross-channel marketing with multi-channel marketing. They are two different things. While the different channels work together and share information in cross-channel communication, the channels in multi-channel marketing do not.
Each channel operates separately and although you can easily maintain your brand image and create a consistent multi-channel campaign, you don’t get the same cohesion or information-sharing benefits.
So why bother with a cross-channel campaign and what does it offer to your business? This type of cohesive marketing strategy works on so many levels and it is arguably more effective than multi-channel marketing in the following ways:
By streamlining your marketing efforts using cross-channels you become incredibly time-effective. There is an initial workload but once the channels start working together and complementing each other, your overall marketing strategy becomes way more time-effective.
With multi-channel marketing, you have to put maximum expense and effort into each separate channel. In contrast, cross-channel marketing can save on costs as the various channels boost each other meaning fewer resources have to be invested in each one.
The sales funnel represents the different points of the customer’s journey and how they progress toward making a purchase. This includes initial awareness, the generation of interest, considering their purchase, and ultimately spending the dollar. A cross-channel campaign allows you to target any level of the sales funnel effectively.
As with any marketing strategy, cross-channel management starts with understanding your customers, their shopping habits, and how they progress through the sales funnel. Hopefully, you should have a heap of research to utilize but you need to understand their behavior so you can see what marketing channels can work.
With your research sorted, you now have to define overarching goals for your marketing campaign. These must be overarching goals as opposed to goals for the individual marketing channels as this helps with cohesion and cross-channel communication. You can still have individual channel goals, but they should ideally fit into your wider strategy.
With all this information and goals you should be able to see which marketing channels will be effective. It could take a little trial and error but to get you started, here are some of the most popular digital marketing channels:
Don’t simply include a marketing channel for the sake of it. Quantity over quality isn’t the way forward here and each channel must be able to make a valid contribution to your strategy.
You must also consider how the different channels can interact with each other, how they can share information, and how they can boost each other’s performance and effectiveness. For example, blog content, SEO, and website content all have a natural affinity for each other and work really well together.
Possibly the most difficult part is determining a budget for your cross-channel campaign. The first step is to allocate an overall marketing budget which should already be part of your existing business financial plan.
With an overall budget, you know what you are working with and how you can split that budget between the different channels. This could take a little trial and error and you will usually find that the budget has to be tweaked as you see that some channels are providing more effective than others.
It’s now time to implement your cross-channel marketing strategy and this is something that takes time to develop. You may not initially see the ways that you can make the channels cohesive and this can grow over time. Either way, you should make regular performance reviews and make adjustments where necessary in alignment with your original goals.
Multi-channel marketing does work and it has done for decades, but cross-channel marketing can be even more effective when implemented correctly. The key is understanding the bonds between the channels and how you can share information to dish to your customers at the various stages of the buying funnel.
Building a positive online reputation is just as important as your SEO strategies, but the great thing is, is that the two overlap and complement each other.
An effective SEO strategy can naturally improve your brand reputation using content like whitepapers, guest posts, and video reviews and in the same instance, a boost in reputation will ultimately help your SEO. In the below guide, I take a look at SEO reputation management and how you can transform your online business image.
What’s one of the first things you do when considering using a company for a big purchase? You open your web browser on your smartphone or computer, load Google.com, and type in its name! This has become a standard practice and it’s a simple thing most people do for a little background research and scouting.
If the results show an active company that has guest posts, guides, video content, positive customer reviews, and whitepapers, you immediately get a positive feeling about the business. In contrast, if your Google search returns a relative black hole of nothingness, doubts start to build up and you become less certain about making a purchase with that company.
This is the power and reality of SEO reputation management. By using an array of SEO strategies, you can positively impact your online reputation and make sure that customers see your company in the right way. You can then measure PR success, make improvements, and keep building on that core reputation over time.
SEO reputation management often happens naturally as part of your SEO campaign, however, it’s important to remain proactive and keep on top of your reputation too. An SEO company London can help with reputation management in SEO, but there are simple things you can do too.
Control what can be controlled, and use your SEO strategies as a dual-edged sword to boost business and your reputation. Below, I have outlined 5 simple ways you can boost your SEO reputation management.
To show that your business is knowledgeable and a voice to be trusted within your industry, aim to publish a range of tutorials and guides. These can be posted on your website as blog articles or you could even create a separate section within your site for guides.
This content has the primary purpose of showing your authority and giving customers and other businesses reassurance of your industry expertise. The content generation also serves as an SEO tool as the articles improve your linking structure, can be used for internal linking, and can include keywords from your SEO strategies.
Video content is incredibly popular on platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok and it serves the dual purpose of boosting your SEO content marketing strategy and improving your brand image.
Video content can be used in two ways – either videos created by your own business similar to the written guides and tutorials, or third-party videos from satisfied customers. Customer review videos are superb for reputation management as they give tangible evidence of your credentials from people who have worked with you.
A white paper is an original published article that centres around a specific theme, idea, or thesis relating to your industry. This could be something like future predictions of industry trends, discussions on new technologies, or assessments of customer habits for example.
White papers primarily show your knowledge and help to raise your profile as an industry leader and someone people can go to for advice. However, they also lean into SEO content marketing strategies and serve as another outlet where keywords and backlinks can be utilized.
Posting guides and tutorials on your own website is a brilliant way to boost SEO and improve your reputation, but what if you could get your voice heard on popular high-authority sites too?
Authored articles and guest posts on external websites are some of the best SEO reputation tools as they help secure those all-important backlinks.
You get the benefit of voicing your opinions and knowledge on a high-authority site that people respect, but also gain high-quality backlinks and can add in some keywords and SEO content too. Over time, you can work on establishing regular guest posts on a monthly or bi-weekly basis as part of your SEO reputation management.
If you Google a business and see that its CEO or high-ranking management has been involved in tradeshows, industry training, or even work with governments, this immediately gives you a positive impression and raises your opinion of the individuals and company.
This SEO reputation management tip is more difficult to utilize as you have to have the business links and know how to get involved in your industry. However, if you can do things like attend tradeshows, and offer training, you can make it known and showcase your efforts as part of your SEO campaign.
SEO reputation management is one of the easier things to implement as much of the content you generate as part of your SEO campaigns will boost your reputation regardless. However, I advise that you always remain proactive and aim to control your reputation and how customers perceive your company via a sound online reputation management strategy.
As an enterprise business, you most likely have an SEO strategy in place and optimized web content. But is your strategy as successful as you would like and are you achieving your SEO goals? If not, a common issue we find when offering enterprise SEO services is a lack of proper keyword research.
This is an area enterprise businesses could often be doing more and we have listed 10 simple tips below that you can use to give your keyword research a boost.
There is absolutely no harm in scoping out the competition and seeing what keywords they are using! Everyone does it and they have probably already crawled your website! Competitor keyword usage is invaluable and you can see what is and isn’t working for them and gain insight.
As an enterprise business, your website is most likely large with multiple pages and products. This can be difficult to maintain and tough to track keywords and keep a cohesive SEO strategy.
To make things easier and more manageable as you grow, segment your content into categories. This could be categories like products, info pages, and customer pages, for example. You can then split keyword research between these different categories.
Seasonal keywords and keywords tied to specific events can be impactful and it is something your enterprise business should jump on. This could be keywords relating to specific seasons like winter and summer, or keywords for popular events like Black Friday, Mother’s Day, Christmas, and Easter.
Instead of continually pumping out new content and potentially creating a complex website hierarchy that is difficult to understand, look at your existing content and see if any of it can be improved.
You may have a range of pages and articles that are thin in terms of content – bulk these up and use them to further your keyword strategies.
Small businesses can provide valuable insight into things like localization and they should not be overlooked. Sure, they aren’t operating on the same scale as you, but they could provide useful insight for things like long-tail keywords.
Branded keywords directly use your business name or something associated with your company. It’s important to keep track of these and see how your reputation is doing. Look for negative keywords relating to your brand and see if there are any common issues you could resolve to boost your reputation.
Google SERPs are a trove of information. You can first look at the different websites that are ranking highly and the content they are using. You can also use the “People also ask” feature and look at FAQs or other search strings relating to your keywords to find other potential opportunities.
Your enterprise business most likely has a large customer base so why not tap into that and perform a little customer market research? Gaining insight from the people you are targeting is a no-brainer. They can give you exactly what you need and potentially show you what they typically search for and common issues they get irritate with when searching or using your website.
User intent relates to why the user is searching. Why has someone just searched for “garden sheds Essex”? Understanding intent can help refine your keywords but also allow you to target your content more to customer needs and desires. If you don’t know the customer’s intent, you could use keywords in the completely wrong context.
Keyword research tools are highly useful but they are not the only source of data. You must try to think outside the box and look at other platforms for inspiration. Websites like Amazon, Quora, Reddit, and Wikipedia can prove useful and provide keywords or SEO insight that you may not have thought of.
Without the right keywords, your SEO strategy for your enterprise business may fall short and this is why it’s important to make thorough research and think outside the box. Hopefully, these 10 tips have given you food for thought and will help you rank for the right keywords.
SEO is a complete, multi-faceted discipline and there are many things that you have to learn to create high-quality SEO campaigns that yield results. An underlying aspect of SEO that always remains important, however, and is worth learning at an SEO training London course is keyword research.
Keywords form the basis of your SEO strategies and are what you optimize your content around. If your business doesn’t use the right keywords, your SEO may not bring in the right customers, and get decent conversions.
The core of keyword research can be broken down into three steps – locating, analyzing, and targeting, and we explain them below.
Before you can do anything you need to have a list of keywords to work with! This is the first thing you must do and you can do the following steps:
A simple starting point is to brainstorm ideas and find keywords based on your business and what it does. What industry is your business part of? What products or services do you sell? Is your company global or does it serve a particular region? Questions like these can help generate keyword lists.
You can use this technique to build a list of seed keywords. These are starting points that you can then spawn other keywords. For example, you have a car dealership in Essex. A seed keyword could be “car dealership”. You could then spawn additional keywords from this by adding words like “car dealership in Essex”, and “car dealership in London”.
Lastly, with a basic keyword list in place, you can use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner to find more short-term and long tail keywords.
Now that you have a list of keywords, you have to narrow your choices and select the best options that you want to target and use as your focus keywords. Two important metrics to consider to select keywords include:
The search volume relates to how popular the word is and how many people search for it. If it has a higher search volume then it has the potential to generate more conversions.
Keyword difficulty relates to how hard it is to rank for that word or phrase. Different platforms give keyword difficulty various rank schemes like Easy to Very Hard. Basically, it denotes the competition and how likely you are to rank for it.
You have to decide which keywords you want to try and rank for based on the data. Bear in mind that keywords with a high search volume can drive more traffic, but they are usually much harder to rank for.
In contrast, low search volume keywords may not yield as many results, but there is often less competition and you can put less effort into the optimization and still rank for the terms.
With your short-term and long-tail keywords selected, you now need to determine how you will target them in your web content. Two important factors to determine this include:
A primary keyword is typically the one that you want to rank the most for. It will be used frequently in your web content such as headings, and meta tags. Secondary keywords are also important but they are not your first target. These are used more sporadically in your content.
Before you do any optimization you must determine the primary and secondary keywords. After that, understanding the search intent of your customers is vital too. It’s no good to simply try and rank for keywords without knowing the context they are used, and why customers will search for them.
You can use common sense for this and put yourself in the shoes of your customers. There are also tools available that can help you understand the intent and use this to better target your keywords.
With targeting sorted, you are now ready to optimize your web content and start using your keywords!
Keyword research doesn’t have to be difficult but it is crucial to get it right and give enough attention to the process. By using the above three steps, you can make sure that you start your SEO campaigns correctly and have the right keywords to optimize your web content.
Studio 10 Shoreditch Stables 138 Kingsland Rd Hoxton, London E2 8DY
© 2024 — ClickSlice All Rights Reserved.
Company No. 10876199 | VAT No. 278157959