Google is a complex beast so this section contains a lot of info, but start with my quick guide then delve deeper if you want…
Max’s Mini Google Guide
- Start with a great business.
- Plan how your new or existing website will compel people to use your business instead of your competition – you need a website that works or it’s all a waste of time.
- Google’s search engine is a popularity contest – popularity is the strongest ranking factor.
- Popularity is determined by the populace! Your site should focus on the people that use it – make them happy by making it easy and pleasurable for them to achieve their goals.
- SEO = Search Engine Optimisation = Making changes to your site and other sites so that your pages appear higher up the lists of search results.
- Google lists pages or images or videos, not sites
SEO is performed on individual items – each of your pages and posts and images etc. should be optimised individually.
- Searches are still mostly based on keywords
Keyword = a single word or a mulit-word phrase.
Most sites have lots of associated keywords, probably more than you realise
A quick example – say you own a pet shop, you may just attempt to rank for ‘pet shop’, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. People will also be searching for ‘puppies’, ‘cute puppies’, ‘pug puppies’, ‘puppy food shop’, and maybe ‘cheap black hawk large breed puppy formula’ etc. And then there are the cats and birds and fish!
- Keyword research is required to find keywords worth optimising for – keywords that are relevant to your business goals, that aren’t prohibitively competitive, and that have sufficient potential customers actually searching for them.
Keyword research is often time consuming and expensive.
- Keyword research may reveal some opportunities or it may indicate your niche is very competitive.
If opportunities exist
You can start modifying your site – you can edit existing content or create new content. It may be best to change the organisation/hierarchy of the pages of your site too.
Don’t forget your visitors or your business goals during the process.
When your content is ready you should share it with the aim to receive links back to your site from other relevant and reputable sites.
If your niche is very competitive
You should consider alternative methods to promote your brand and drive traffic to your site – advertising, customer reviews, social media.
Building brand awareness is as important as putting effort into SEO
Ideally both content modification with link building and brand promotion will be pursued.
- Lots of keywords x lots of pages x lots of options = lots of decisions to make
These decisions will affect your business so you should be involved.
I can help
I can help with the research, the decisions, and the implementation.