If you a new local business it can seem a daunting task to fully understand SEO. Search Engine Optimisation is constantly changing and keeping up with the latest trends can feel like a full-time job.
When people need a service they usually go with a company which appears on the first page of a Google search, so you want to make sure your company appears on that first page too. This is achieved by ranking high for keyword phrases which relate to the products or services you provide.
Some people find it difficult to figure this part out. Don’t worry, in this article, you will find a step-by-step guide to kickstart your SEO knowledge.
Why should you invest in local SEO?
Only recently have businesses begun posting advertisements online, before the wild web, people would place adverts in the Yellow Pages, print copy newspapers etc. At least 95% of people now use the internet to search for a service, Google is by far the most used.
Step 1
Your first step should be forming simple keyword phrases that relate to your business. For example, if you work in the cleaning industry you may use, a cleaning company, house cleaners, business cleaners, residential cleaners and so forth.
Step 2
Localise your keyword phrases. In the above example, we had the following keyword: cleaning company, but the question is where do you offer your services? Most small to medium-sized businesses will work in a specific geographic location. For example, my business mainly focuses on customers based in London. For the cleaning company example, we can simply add an additional keyword for a more geographically targeted keyword phrase: Cleaning Company London
Note: When you add additional keywords you will probably find fewer results returned from the search engine:
- Cleaning Company – Google Results: 1,880,000,000
- Cleaning Company London – Google Results: 151,000,000
- Cleaning Company East London – Google Results: 101,000,000
As you can see the more keywords entered into Google Search will return fewer results, fewer results tend to mean less competition for this specific keyword phrase.
Often businesses will make the mistake of trying to optimise for ultra-competitive keyword phrases and achieve no results which can be very off-putting.
Once you have a list of keyword phrases, you can use a free keyword research tool like Uber Suggest to find out if the keyword can actually generate any traffic.
Tip: Remember to incorporate the keyword phrases on your website pages.
I would suggest creating a spreadsheet to track which keyword phases offer you the best chance of ranking in the search engines and the potential amount of traffic each keyword can generate. You can also use Uber Suggest to check your ranking for these keywords!
Google My Business
Google offers the ability to list your business in Google Maps and create a profile of your business which is displayed on Google search results.
“Google Business” is a must-have and do not worry it’s free!
Setup Page: https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/business/
Once you have a Google Business listing you open the opportunity to get your business in front of potential customers in your local area. For example, if someone searches for a hair salon and they are based in North London then it would make sense that Google Map displays results for Hair Salons which are local to the customer.
Developing Links
Another key indicator for SEO is links which point to your website. Often people think link building is difficult and time-consuming, and the answer is “Yes it is”. There are a few ways in which can you quickly generate some backlinks to your website for free.
Yell.com is a popular business directory. You can sign up to yell.com and list your business profile within a few minutes, yell will also offer you the opportunity to have a link to your business website, congrats you just got your first backlink 🙂 You can also get backlinks from popular social media services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to mention just a few.
As you can see on my website I have lots of articles, video tutorials, tools and other resources which all help to generate backlinks. It’s very simple, if your website has awesome content then you can expect people to link to your website. So be creative and helpful whenever possible.
At DCP we have a dedicated eLearning YouTube Channel with over 550 video tutorials on a wide range of subjects. Each one of those videos can become a resource on DCP’s blog, this in return gives us the opportunity to get backlinks to our website.
The above is just a brief example of SEO, get some more useful tips by looking at the infographic below created by Pickaweb.
(Click to enlarge infographic)
Article created by: DCP Web Design London
