The Small Business Guide to SEO

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In this article we will take a look at how a small business can use SEO to promote their products/ services and make sure that you rank as high as possible in search page results.

 

On Page Optimisation

When someone types a question into a search bar, the search engine crawls the web to locate the most relevant pages. You need to optimise pages on your website to make sure that your website ranks as high as possible. What you need to do is:

 

–          Optimise using the right keywords

–          Make sure your URL is short and self-explanatory.

–          Your webpage needs to describe your content clearly.

 

Content

Make sure that the content you create is of high quality and that it draws links from other sites, which means that your site will rank higher in searches.

Focus on content that is timeless and will keep visitors coming back to your site. Remember that you are writing content for your readers and not for a search engine, so avoid filling it up with keywords. For example, if you offer website management services, write posts such as ‘Top 5 reasons why you need management services for your website’

 

Link Building

Within your content, use relevant links and link to external sources which are reliable. Perhaps use 1 to 2 links per page as this will help your sites trustworthiness.

Link to internal pages of your own site where relevant as this improves navigation, as well as user experience.

Try and get some backlinks to your site. This means other sites linking to your sites. Ask friends, customers, suppliers etc. to link to your site as this will help to improve your rankings as well as build authority for your site. What is important is that you focus on relevant and qualitative links. For example, if you are a beautician you don’t want links from an electrician as this can have a negative impact on your ranking.

A final point is to make sure that you monitor your traffic so that you know your efforts are actually working for you. Google Analytics for example can provide you with information related to how customers behave on your site, as well as how many visits you receive.

 

 

 

 

Outsourcing Advice for Small Businesses

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If you’re a small business owner you know how hard it is to keep many different balls all juggling at once. Before you decide to outsource, you need to make sure that you’re outsourcing to someone who is good. We will guide you through the basics that you need to research before you go any further.

 

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are very useful for getting a feel for someone. Take a look at what their LinkedIn profile says about them and have a look at whether they share content which is very important if you’re hiring someone for a role such as a social medial specialist in SEO and web marketing.

Google

Using google, search the person’s name and take a look at what the results bring up. For now, just ignore their LinkedIn profile and website and just concentrate on whether their name comes up for anything linked to their industry. This will show you that they’re fully active in what they do.

Time

If the person you are planning to hire is charging by the hour you need to work out if they will be sending you a timesheet or something similar, so you can see how many hours they have worked. If you’ve allocated 30 hours a month, check how this time is being split and more importantly, check that they are fulfilling their 30 hours.

Payments

Decide on what the payment terms will be and when you expect them to send an invoice. This can be adapted between each person that you use for outsourcing and It’s something that you need to bring up if they don’t. Never assume that you will be paying the VAT or that payments are 30 days. Make sure that you get this right from the offset so everyone knows where they stand.

Contracts

Before you begin working together, make sure that everything has been agreed and written down from the start, this way your relationship begins on the right foot. A final point to be sure of is that the person you have employed is completing the work themselves and not outsourcing it to someone else.

 

 

 

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