‘I have a website with zero clicks’ – Why you need SEO
We hear this a lot, ‘My website doesn’t get traffic’ or ‘I have a website with zero clicks’. Learn what SEO us and how it can improve your website and business…
How SEO can help your website and your business grow
Did you know that over 200 new websites go live every minute? There are nearly 2 billion websites in existence in the world and that number is only set to keep growing as we live an increasingly digital existence. So, what does that mean for your business and your website? It means that once your website is designed, built and the content and images have been dropped in, your perfect customer might not stumble across you as quickly as you’d like. In fact, it’s been suggested that it can take around a month for a new website to generate its first lead. If you want to help more people find your website you can either spend some of your marketing budget on Google Ads, or you can invest a little time working on SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it means the different ways you can improve the visibility of your website to boost the number of visitors you get. The idea is to rank as high as possible in Google’s results pages when someone is on the hunt for a business just like yours. Google’s search engine SEO can also be used to ensure that not only do you get more website visitors, but that they are also of a higher quality. For example, if you offer dog walking services in Wiltshire you want to show up when local people search for dog walkers. There isn’t much point in attracting lots of website visitors who live in Scotland!
How SEO helps your website and business
The main reason people pour their energy into SEO is to make more sales. By increasing the visibility of your website, you should attract more visitors who are actively seeking services or products like yours. That certainly is going to boost your inbound leads and help grow your business. There are several other benefits to working on SEO which you might like the sound of too.
SEO can also help you leapfrog your industry competitors. If you operate in a busy market or have a close competitor, making sure your website is very easy to find will help you. Of course, if your competitor is investing in SEO and you’re not, you might find they are getting a lot more digital leads and sales than you are.
It’s also useful to help you optimise your website’s user experience (UX). Whereas Google’s search crawlers (automated programmes which hunt for pages that are new or updated) used to look for keywords, they now take into account headers, page structures and more. User experience is all about making sure website visitors can easily find and read the information they need. If you’ve taken steps to make sure your website is easy to navigate, you’re more likely to rank highly. That might be making sure it’s mobile optimised, has clear menus and has calls to action on every page with internal links.
The SEO basics
SEO involves creating high-quality content for your website which includes keywords related to the words and phrases people type into Google or say to their smart speaker. So, if someone is searching for a cleaner in Nottingham, the keywords might be ‘local cleaner Nottingham’ or ‘house cleaning Nottingham’. If your business operates in a certain area, it’s very important to include local place names in your keywords so that you pop up when people include them in their search. Google’s crawlers prioritise websites with updated content, which is why writing a blog once or twice a month (including relevant keywords!) is a great way to boost SEO.
SEO also involves ensuring that meta titles, metatags and meta descriptions for each page are set up correctly. This might sound very complicated, but it simply means the snippets of info which come up next to a website search result and the heading structures behind each page. Other aspects of SEO include improving or monitoring your website’s technical health, such as page load speed, and building backlinks. The latter refers to placing links from other websites to your site so you might find free listings websites or invest in some PR activity. You can offer to guest blog on someone else’s website
A word of caution for website SEO!
It is possible to overdo SEO and put people off getting in touch with you, A website needs to still be able to do its primary job – to tell website visitors who you are, what you do, who you do it for and how to buy from you – as well as attract those visitors there in the first place.
If you try too hard to optimise your website for SEO by making it really attractive to Google’s web crawlers, you can risk making it look a mess for visitors. For example, stuffing it full of so many keywords the copy doesn’t make sense, doesn’t share your brand voice or isn’t persuading visitors to get in touch with you. The same goes for the navigation structure – don’t forget to put yourself in the shoes of a new web visitor who’s exploring your site for the first time. How easy is it for them to find key information or get in touch with you?
So, in closing you need to first make sure your website is optimised for visitors and then balance that with doing some work to make sure it’s SEO optimised too. If you’re not sure where to start or you’d rather hand SEO over to the experts, we can help. Here at Black Nova Designs we offer 1, 3 or 6-month SEO packages designed to get websites seen by more people and help boost your business growth. Get in touch with the team by emailing or calling the office on 01793 210045.