As is the case with almost all industries within the UK, competition is fierce. Ensuring you are found online ahead of your competitors is one of the best ways to gain a competitive edge.
This is where effective SEO comes in. The practice of optimising your website for search engines can make a huge difference to your overall business performance.
However, when you are looking for ways to ensure your business is at the forefront of search results, you need to make sure you are using the latest strategies. If you don’t, then there is a chance you could find your business disappearing into obscurity through poor rankings, or Google penalties.
So, with that in mind, here are six tips to get your Wirral business off to the best possible start.
1. Find the Right Keywords to Target
It’s no good optimising your website for search engines if you don’t know which keywords you start the best chance of ranking for. By identifying the right keywords, you can ensure that you are targeting your pages and blog content and search phrases that you have a chance of winning, rather than wasting your time on high-competition keywords that are never going to be realistically attainable.
If you’re not sure how to start, many software programs such as Screaming Frog and SEMRush will help you with keyword ideas and rate their individual ranking difficulty. Start with the most relevant keywords with low competition first, and then build from there.
2. Publish High-Quality Content
It’s all very well optimising for the best keywords, but people will only find your business online if they are interested in what you have to offer. This means that your website content has to be superior to that provided by your competitors.
The quality of your content is one of the most important aspects of SEO, so always try and ensure that it is high-quality. It doesn’t matter whether it’s your weekly blog or your service pages, every inch of your content has to be better than what’s already out there to feature at the top of search engine results.
3. Make Sure Your Website is User-Friendly
When you do manage to attract visitors to your website, it’s imperative that they have a good user experience. If your site is hard to navigate or gives visitors a bad experience, it’s unlikely that they will come back. Plus, user experience is now a significant factor in Google’s ranking algorithm.
The best way to ensure this doesn’t happen is by making sure your website is optimised for usability. This means using internal linking and navigation effectively, using the right colours and fonts, and making sure your site loads quickly regardless of the device used to access it.
4. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
Did you know that the first interaction a customer has with your company is more likely to be on a smartphone than any other device? As you would expect, that means you need to ensure your site is both accessible and functional on smaller screens.
It’s not just about making sure your company name and logo presents well on a smartphone screen, either. Every page of your website has to be optimised for mobile. It’s best to adopt a mobile-first approach to your web design, meaning you put the needs of your mobile site first and worry about the desktop version later down the road.
5. Get Social to Boost SEO
Social media is crucial for local businesses from an SEO standpoint. Remember, many users utilise social media sites as such engines themselves. This means you need to have a solid social media presence if you want your business to be found online, especially if you are a startup with a new website.
Make sure you have a good-looking profile on every major social media platform – and that your content is updated regularly – helping build traffic back to your website without any extra effort on your part. What’s even better is that user-generated content is also looked upon favourably by search engines.
Once you’ve got social traffic and user-generated content linking back to your site, Google will look favourably on your site and likely allocate more resources to it moving forwards.
6. Be Patient and Remain Consistent
Successful websites for small businesses take time – lots of it. Expect your site to be at least 12 months old before it starts receiving any substantial traffic. It takes Google longer than ever before to trust your site as an authority within your given industry, and so it’s a question of remaining patient during those early months.
Thus, even when your site is a ghost town, keep pushing on with your content strategies such as social media and blog posts. Eventually, Google will trust your domain and allow that traffic to trickle through. It may seem like that’s a long time to wait, but it’s worth it in the long run.
Get Your Small Wirral Business Noticed Online with SEO Campaigns from Ctrl Alt Create
When you’re a small company on a limited budget, SEO can be one of your most potent weapons in acquiring traffic to your website, and ultimately customers. The good news is that with the proper techniques, it’s possible to give your Wirral business a boost without spending a fortune.
At Ctrl Alt Create, we’ve made it our mission to offer affordable and effective digital marketing solutions for small businesses across the UK. We offer carefully orchestrated SEO campaigns for small businesses in the Wirral region that help them to acquire traffic and leads for a fraction of the cost of other online advertising methods such as PPC.
So, if you are looking to drive more traffic to your local company’s website, make sure to contact us today to learn more about how our SEO services can help your Wirral business today.