There’s a chance you’ve heard or seen the acronym ‘SEO’ sometime over the past decade. You may not know what it is, or how it can help your B2B marketing. You may not even know what it stands for. This article will look to clear some of the confusion surrounding SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation.
If your business has a website, you will want it to come up in search engine results for various search terms.
The basics
These are the key tools that should be used across any website that will make your life easier when it comes to navigating SEO.
- SEMrush
Over the past 10 years, SEMrush has evolved to become a powerful and comprehensive tool offering data analytics across social media, content marketing, competitor research and, of course, keyword ranking and SEO. It allows you to identify opportunities, audit your website and backlinks, ultimately helping you to improve your site rankings. - Google Analytics
Google accounts for approximately 90% of all search engine traffic worldwide. It also offers some of the most powerful analytics available for website owners. On the surface, Google Analytics will allow you to track traffic into your website, their dwell time, how they interact with your content, what they are buying or the forms they are filling out. There are much more powerful capabilities, but for those starting out in SEO, these will provide valuable insights into the performance of your website. - Google Search Console
Google Search Console is another of Google’s very powerful product offerings to website owners. Formerly known as Webmaster Tools, adding this to your SEO toolkit will allow you to see how your website is performing in search results, and how you can improve that performance. - Google Keyword Planner
You will need a Google Ads account to use this tool, but it’s invaluable when looking for additional keyword opportunities for your website. You can also use it to look into search volume data and trends, which is invaluable if you’re investigating potential audience numbers. If you’re not sure where to start looking for keywords or focus words for the pages of your website, this tool will allow you to search for new keywords simply by using a phrase, category or a website.
The next steps
Once you have the basics lined up and are tracking data into and through your website, you’re ready to investigate improving the aspects of your website that might be hindering higher rankings in search results.
Behind the scenes
Checking the backend of each page can be time-consuming, but it ensures that your website is starting with a clean bill of health.
- Is your primary keyword in your URL?
Does the address of your website contain your brand name or the main keyword you’re using on your website? If not, you might be missing out on additional SEO juice through to your website. - Does the title tag of each page of your website contain a unique keyword?
Each page of your website should cover one main idea of your business. As such, you want to ensure that the title tag contains that keyword. Why should it be unique? Having a unique idea on each page of your website stops your pages from competing against one another in search results. Overall, the pages of your website should be complementary, not conflicting. - Are the meta descriptions on each of your pages around 150 characters, including the page’s keyword?
Giving each page of your website a meta description will help search engines to understand what your page is about, and why people might want to see your content. Without it, the meaning of your content may get lost in translation, leading to unqualified leads heading to your website or worse, low rankings. Google is trialling meta descriptions greater than 150 characters, but it is still currently safer to build to this character limit. - Does each page of your website have a single <h1> with a keyword at the top of the body section?
The <h1> tag on your website should address the main idea of your page in a single sentence. There should be only one of them, located at the top of the content on your page. Ideally, it should have the main keyword of the page in it. This will allow search engines to index your page quickly, get a firm idea of what the page offers audiences and serve your page well in search engine results. It is important to note that the title tag and <h1> need to be unique. - Do you have a sitemap? Have you submitted it to Google?
An xml sitemap will help search engines understand how your website is constructed and which pages are for everyday visitors to your site. Submitting it to Google and other search engines will allow indexing of your website to happen faster and with less potential errors. Not sure how to get started on this? There are website plugins to get this underway for you. - Have you developed a robots.txt file and submitted it to Google?
Like an xml sitemap, a robots.txt tells indexing robots which pages to look at and which ones to ignore. You can choose to disallow certain pages from being indexed, which can be useful for pages like client portals.
Look to the Copy
Once the computer-facing side of your website has been checked, you can look to improve the audience-facing side of your pages, or the images and copy.
- Have you included at least 300 words of unique content on each page?
Each page of your website should not include less than 300 words ideally. This includes pages serving forms, landing pages with video, blog posts, product pages, etc. The content on each page should be unique, as Google recognises duplicate content and lowers your organic search rankings, or may even penalise your website with a Manual Penalty. - Do all the images across your website have descriptive ALT attributes and filenames?
When uploading images to your website, make sure that the filename is descriptive of the content of the image itself. No one likes to see “IMG122017_35122.jpg” and it doesn’t help Google understand the content of the picture. This factor will add to the SEO of each page on your website if employed correctly. - Does the copy on each page employ synonyms of your keywords in a natural way?
It’s a “black hat” SEO practice to just add keywords and their alternatives into the copy of a webpage. It’s called Keyword Stuffing and Google will decrease your rankings for employing it, if they don’t issue you with a Manual Penalty. Instead, look to use synonyms of the keywords you’re using on the page in a natural, person-friendly way that helps make the copy of your page easier to read. - Have you employed internal linking across your website?
Linking from one page of your website to another can take visitors to your website on a journey through your content, keeping them on your site for longer, leading them towards a potential conversion point. It also adds valuable authority to deeper pages of your website, aiding higher search engine rankings. Don’t overdo it though, or this can turn visitors off, having them bounce from your website to a competitor’s.
Where to from here?
Search Engine Optimisation isn’t a set-and-forget tactic. You need regular maintenance to make the best of any work you perform.
The most important thing to remember about search engine optimisation is that, as search engines like Google get smarter about how people use the web, optimisation becomes more about making your entire digital footprint work together.
It’s not just about your website, although it is a huge part of the equation. There are heaps of other tools out there that will help you with different aspects of SEO. Remember, all aspects of your business’s digital footprint need to work together to provide a harmonious brand presence.
Still not sure where to start with SEO for your business digital presence? Get in touch with us today so we can help with an SEO audit of your business footprint online.
