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Is Your SEO and Social Media Working For You?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) along with Social Media Marketing, are the two cornerstones of your digital marketing strategy and need to be optimised if your business and website are to succeed in the online environment. There is lots of competition out there, and you need to make sure that you're ahead of the game, and that people can actually find you. Ideally your website needs to rank high up on page 1, to be competitive and increase your traffic and sales. Social media marketing is a great tool as it gives your business even more exposure, attracting more followers and customers to your website.

Let's start with SEO and what you can do to improve it:

Foundational SEO -

Firstly you need to decide on some keywords that are relevant to your business, that people would be using to search for your product or services in Google. If you are an accountant you could for example use accountancy services and your location. These keywords can be placed in the title, the meta description and also in the actual written content of the website page they refer to.

Content

Content is very important to Google; engaging, informative content gives your website authority in the Google search results. Google recommends between 500 and 1,000 words for each main page on your site. The number of pages on your site is another factor that increases your site's rankings in search results; 7 to 8 pages is great, but the more the better.

To show Google that your site is developing and growing, you should really post a blog at least once a month, 700-1,000 words preferably.

You lose rankings if you don't do this!

Website Loading Speed

Google's algorithm update of 2021 requires all websites to load in under 2 seconds. This is for both desktop and mobile devices. Google does provide free software to enable you to test your site, called "Page Speed Insights." If it's too slow, you can try updating your hosting.

Backlinks

Another very important part of SEO, these are links located on another website that link back to your own site. Backlinks are usually from other companies' recommendations and also directory listings, for example yell.com. A large business can even get a Wikipedia backlink. Magazines and newspapers are highly sought-after, like Forbes, The Times online, Guardian online, and specialist mags like Town and Country. However, these are very difficult to get unless you've got a very unique service or business that they would be interested in. To get other quality backlinks, send one of your associates or suppliers an email, tell them about your business, and ask them to write a small piece about you and your services, and include a link to your site.

Don't make the mistake of buying 100s of cheap backlinks on Fiverr; you will end up with a load of spammy links which are from poor quality and irrelevant sites, and these backlinks could even result in your site being banned from Google altogether!

Social Media Marketing - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin

These are all about creating brand awareness and attracting followers. You need to regularly post interesting content preferably three times a week - be it text, picture or video - containing information about any new service or product, a topical subject, how-to video, behind the scenes tour; anything to generate engagement. Consistently building more and more content increases your exposure, as you'll be higher up the search results, resulting in more followers, likes and shares. Use relevant hashtags with each post so people can find you easily.

This list may sound long, but spending only a few minutes a day can get you the results you are after.

You’ve got the steps, now all you need to do is gather those testimonials and sell your digital brand story. Don’t forget to drop us a line if you want to plan your next marketing strategy.

If you need us you can get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] or give us a call on 01923 260519.