A Guide To SEO For Business Owners

If you are a business owner, you probably know about SEO - ‘Search Engine Optimization’... There is SO much more to SEO than you may think, and it is extremely valuable if you do it right.

As one of the key components of Digital Marketing and what we do at Firebelly (and one of the questions I get asked the most), I’m going to break down Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

This guide will help you get a clear understanding of precisely what it means and how you can use it in your business.

Ready to learn?

Let’s get started!

What does SEO mean?

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving your website to increase traffic and visibility on search engines such as Google through using relevant keywords, content, HTML, structured data and link building.

What is SEO?

Ultimately SEO increases your visibility to your audience and potential customers. It is effectively hacking where you rank in the search results, based on the amount of content you produce, the keywords you are ranking for, and many other factors. Your activity on Google My Business and social media will also play a part.

There are many ways to use this to your advantage and drive traffic to your website; whether you are a local business or offer a product or service, you absolutely will benefit from an SEO strategy.

How Does SEO Work?

Search engines ‘crawl’ sites (fondly referred to as spiders!), what happens is Google’s Spiders will crawl your site, read your content and place it on Google. Not being found on Google? You need to ask Google to crawl your site and add your content to its database! Using a combination of relevant keywords in the right places, you can ensure that you are giving Google ALL the right signals to say ‘Put me in the search results!’.

Why is SEO helpful?

Optimising your site for Search Engine’s can get you found in the search results on Google! For example, if the search term is ‘Digital Marketing Agency London’, including these keywords in blogs, in the headings and titles of your pages and images, will help Google pick up your content and show it in results.

Google’s task is to find the most relevant information and present it to the searcher! Make it easy for Google by using keywords and making sure your data is correct.

If you rank higher than your competitors on Google, your potential customers are more likely to click on your website and, ultimately, buy your product or service! As users, we TRUST Google and trust that it will give us the answers we need; you just need to make Google trust you too.

Why is SEO important?

Search is one of the primary sources of direct traffic to your website!

93% of online experiences start with a search! Whether that’s on Google, Amazon, YouTube, Pinterest, and so many more, Search Engines are EVERYWHERE.

You could be missing out on a high proportion of your potential customers’ traffic if you haven’t optimised your site. Make the most of these simple hacks to improve your reach and visibility online.

There are two different types of SEO, On-Page & Off-Page…

Let’s break these down and take a look at how YOU can own your SEO.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is simply; SEO ‘on the page’ is where you optimise your webpages to rank higher on search engines; this could be through the content itself OR the HTML.

I’ve broken down areas of ‘On-Page SEO’ below:

Content

You can optimise the content you post on your site for search engines! Actively use keywords and a variety of short-form and long-form content in your blogs, videos, case studies & web pages. Keep your content fresh and have plenty of it.

HTML

Coding on your website doesn’t need to be complicated for SEO. On-page HTML can be broken down into four main areas:

Title - Do you title your pages and blogs? In your page’s settings in the back end of your website, you’ll have options to add a page title and an SEO title, shown in the search results. They can be different, so utilise the SEO title to be something that will not only grab attention but also incorporates your keywords.

Tags - The text tags H1-H6 can be used to tell Google your key topics and sub-topic. The main header tag is called H1, in HTML form is: <h1>Page Title</h1>. The tags tell Google the key points of your page.

Alt Text - If you want your website to be accessible to all, this is a feature in which you can describe in text what is in an image; this is beneficial for those who are visually impaired and use screen readers.

Meta Description - This is the page description that will show up on the search results page; you should make sure that your description is relevant to the page and no longer than 300 characters in length.

Structured Data

Schema is a shared vocabulary for webmasters; the major search engines top ‘tech geeks’ came up with a language to communicate what’s on a website for the internet to provide a better user experience.

Schema markup (structured data) is a code that you put in your website’s back end with some information about the type of rich snippet. A rich snippet is the information boxes you see inc. Recipes, answers bullet points, a prime spot on Google!

Rich snippets are an AMAZING opportunity for your page to be featured in various formats on Google, claiming the desired real estate on the first page of the search results!

Google

There are some technical aspects that you can do in the back end of your website to connect your site to the Google database.

Ask Google to Crawl your site!

You can take a few simple steps to ask Google to crawl your site or a particular URL.

Head to Google Search Console
Go to URL inspection
Type your URL in the bar and press enter
This will tell you if your URL is visible on Google Search
If its not, click request indexing
Google will then check your site and, if approved, index it!

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page refers to links and external signals, you may have guessed by now that Google loves a signal, and a social signal is one of them! Below is a basic overview of Off-Page SEO.

Page Authority & Linkbuilding

Previously, Google used to rank and establish page authority by volume, which meant you would rank based on the number of websites that had a link to your page. This lead to what is now known as ‘Black Hat SEO’, where companies would pay websites for links to improve their ranking, a very dodgy method and of course, Google cottoned on to that quickly.

Google now ranks your page based on page authority and value; this is established by how many links you have back to your website from reputable websites locally and nationally. The relevance of the backlinks determines your page authority score, so be mindful of that!

Digital PR

In your PR strategy, do you have a plan to distribute articles to digital news outlets? Digital PR includes any news site, including daily mail, BuzzFeed, lad bible etc. Having articles about you on these sites can create awareness of your brand and help with your SEO, as these sites are established and reputable in the eyes of Google.

Citations

If you are a part of a local directory or national online directory, this can help you with your SEO! Why? Each link is considered a backlink, and as a directory, is trusted by Google.

Don’t forget!

Google makes changes ALL the time to ensure its users are getting the BEST possible experience and getting the most value out of using their service. They aim to be the fastest and the best when it comes to providing results and answers to your questions!

I will recommend not put all your eggs in one basket and remember that there are other search engines. We live in the Google era, but I’m sure there will be other search engines that will play a big part in the future of SEO.

As always, keep learning and keep informed about the marketing world’s changes; the best way to stay informed is by learning from experts, reading marketing news and the platform directly.