Why is SEO important for small businesses? 28 Feb 2023 1:14 AM (2 years ago)
If you run a small business and have started a website, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the term SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.
While there’s lots of jargon around SEO that can confuse and overwhelm, it’s simply maximising the potential of your website so that it appears on Google when people are searching for terms relating to your business.
For example, if you’re a window cleaner in Wolverhampton, you’d want to appear at the top of the search results if someone searched for ‘window cleaner in wolverhampton‘ or ‘window cleaning services wolverhampton‘ or ‘window cleaners near me‘.
People use Google every day with high intent to find products and services, so it’s essential that all businesses (small or large) take advantage of the opportunity.
But why is SEO particularly important for small businesses?
Well, it’s effectively a free sales channel.
SMEs often find marketing budgets are tight so if you know you can get more customers just by making some simple changes to your website, why wouldn’t you?
In smaller local markets, dominating search results might even provide all the sales required to sustain your business – it can be that lucrative.
Is SEO even more important than social media for small businesses?
There’s no definitive right or wrong answer to this question, but it’s worth remembering that people who find your site via Google were searching for your products or services. That means they’re much more likely to become customers because they arrived with the intent to buy.
Sites like Facebook and Instagram are great for getting people to discover your business but many aren’t necessarily in the market for what you’re selling. You might be able to convince them and develop a dedicated following, but they start out as passive viewers, so it can take longer to convert them to paying customers.
You would of course do both activities, but traffic from Google is often more immediately profitable, particularly for small enterprises.
How should a small business get started with SEO?
This will depend on your level of technical proficiency and the desire to manage the process yourself, but there are a couple of simple things I would advise every small business owner to do with their website, just to get the ball rolling with SEO.
1. Install Google Analytics and Google Search Console on your website.
These two bits of software are free and provide you with most of the data you need to get started with SEO. Google Analytics shows you where all the traffic to your website comes from and what those visitors do after they arrive. Search Console is even more important for SEO because it shows you exactly how Google view your website and shows you all the specific phrases your website is showing up for in their results.
2. Claim your Google My Business (Map) listing.
This is also completely free and if you’re looking to promote your services in a specific area is an essential component of SEO. Map listings always appear right at the top of the page when people search using a location (e.g. windows cleaners in wolverhampton, cafes in manchester, etc) and to be considered, you need to have a My Business listing established.
3. Make sure your website explains all of your products or services in as much detail as possible.
Small businesses will quite often have a homepage, a contact page and one simple page called ‘services’ that lists out everything they do. But it’s important you dedicate entire pages to each service or product to give yourself the best possible chance of Google matching a user’s search to your website. And on those pages, go into as much detail as possible because Google likes pages that offer complete information.
Finally…speak to a professional
There are all kinds of off-the-shelf SEO services and tools you can find online to take your efforts to the next level, but I would strongly advise not doing anything you don’t fully understand. Find an independent consultant (like me), have a discussion about what you’re trying to do with your business on Google and if what’s being proposed seems logical and makes sense, take it from there.
Speak to me today about your SEO for free, no-obligation advice. Details can be found here.
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Why Google Search Console is a must for SEO 27 Jan 2021 3:21 AM (4 years ago)
If your current SEO supplier doesn’t use Google Search Console, you should part ways immediately.
Why?
Well, Google Search Console is your direct link to Google. It’s where you gain insight right from the horse’s mouth about your website and how it’s performing in their results.
Analysing this data and using it to improve performance is an essential part of any SEO campaign.
If you’re not doing it, you’re not credible.
Yes, you can use tools like SEO Moz or SEMRush but they should supplement the information you get from Google, not replace it completely.
What data does Search Console provide?
The most valuable report in the Search Console is the ‘Performance’ report. This shows the specific keywords your website is ranking for, how many times your listings have been viewed and how many clicks it’s received from those keywords.
The above is just a sample and you can view up to a thousand different keywords for any given report.
This data should form the basis of SEO strategy. With it, you can:
- Find quick wins by seeing which keywords are currently driving the most traffic to your site and get more by focusing your effort.
- Identify new targets by seeing which relevant keywords the site is showing for in the results but aren’t generating traffic.
- Analyse the overall composition of your traffic to see if it’s made up of the type of searches you require to generate business.
- Assess short and long term performance of the website on Google (data can go back as far as 16 months).
- Check that Google Analytics is reporting your organic search engine traffic accurately.
All of the above is incredibly important.
Aside from the Performance report, Google Search Console will also tell you:
- Which other websites are linking to your website (incredibly important for search engine success).
- Which of your pages are being used in Google’s results and which are being ignored or not found.
- Any penalties (called ‘Manual Actions’) or security issues the site is experiencing that may hamper search engine performance.
- How each page performs on mobile devices (very important for SEO as mobile search now accounts for more than desktop).
- How fast each page is loading (very important to provide a good user experience and in turn improve rankings).
When you add all this information together and consider Google Search Console is completely free, there really is no excuse for not using it.
If you’d like me to install Search Console on your website and provide some of the insights listed here completely free, get in touch.
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RAWF Pet Food Expands US Territory 14 Nov 2020 5:44 AM (4 years ago)
One of my US-based clients, RAWF Pet Food, have recently expanded their territory into New Jersey and Connecticut.
The company deliver raw dog food direct from their Long-Island based farm, previously servicing New York State exclusively.
But they’ve now worked hard to gain approval in two additional states and expand the operation.
This is great for the business and great for our online marketing efforts, giving us those extra locations to target with landing pages and encourage more interest from organic search.
It’s still early days in the SEO development of the site, but as always the goal is to create a technically sound site with diverse, interesting and optimised content before expanding into external marketing.
You can view the RAWF website here – https://rawfpetfood.com/
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Why isn’t my website showing on Google? 9 Jun 2020 2:13 AM (4 years ago)
You go to Google. You search for your website. You can’t find it.
Why?
There are two answers and reasons within each of those so I’ll cover both as I can as concisely as possible.
If you want a shortcut solution, just contact me with the address of the website and the search term you think you should be showing for and I’ll tell you the reason(s) you’re not showing up.
To figure it out on your own though, here’s some guidance…
Answer #1 Your website isn’t indexed
If it’s a brand new website it will take time for Google to find it and include it in their results (or ‘index’ it to use the technical term).
You can check if your site is indexed by going to Google and typing the following into the search bar (obviously swapping YOURURL for the actual address of your website):
site:https://www.YourURL.com
If Google doesn’t return any results, the site isn’t indexed.
This isn’t uncommon with new websites on new domains, particularly those that haven’t been marketing elsewhere online.
If you have an established website that’s previously been indexed on Google then you may have been penalised or there might be a technical issue with the website that needs resolving.
Solutions
Install Google Search Console on the website and manually submit the URL to Google.
If you’re unsure about how to do this, contact me and I’ll do it for you. If there are any technical issues with your website, which make it impossible for Google to include it in their listings, Search Console will flag them.
Add a link to your website from other websites.
Google find websites by crawling the internet from one link to another so the more links pointing to your website the more likely you are to get found. A quick and easy way to add links is on social media.
Go into the source code of the website and check for the ‘noindex’ code.
Sometimes without knowing it, you’re directly telling Google to ignore your website by including the noindex tag within the code. If you’ve installed Google Search Console, it will also be able to tell you if Google can actually access the website.
Answer #2 Your website isn’t ranking
If all the pages of your website are definitely indexed and you’re wondering why you don’t appear for a particular search, it’s almost certainly because Google doesn’t see your website as being relevant for that search term or doesn’t see it as being as relevant as other websites that are showing.
Solutions
Make sure your content is relevant.
The most important thing to Google is relevancy, so on a basic level if you want to appear for the search term ‘doughnuts’ you have to include the word doughnuts in your website content. Google look for this information in the URL, title, headings, navigation and copy on every page of a website. If you don’t mention the phrases you’re interested in appearing for somewhere in these locations on at least one page it’s unlikely you’ll get listed prominently.
Be user friendly.
Relevancy is paramount but if the website is slow to load or doesn’t work properly on all devices (i.e. desktops, mobiles and tablets) it’s likely Google won’t like using it. They want to give their users the best quality results and a website that doesn’t perform well will reflect poorly on them.
Get some links.
If your website is the vehicle, links from other websites are the fuel. In competitive markets where lots of websites have done some SEO work, the number and quality of links a website has from other websites is usually the key differential.
Be realistic.
If you’re a new website competing against established competition for a competitive search term, it’s unlikely you’ll get a prominent position in the search results without some serious hard work. If you want to know what is and isn’t realistic for your website in your specific market get in touch and I’ll tell you.
I hope you found this article useful. If you have any follow up questions please do get in touch or leave a comment below.
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7 Basic ‘What’ SEO Questions Answered 2 Jun 2020 6:02 AM (4 years ago)
I think as an industry we’re guilty of assuming everyone understands the basics of SEO, which can often lead to some muddled and confusing conversations. With that in mind here are some straightforward answers to some straightforward SEO questions, which will hopefully serve people well.
What does SEO stand for?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.
What does SEO mean?
In broad terms, SEO means improving your website so it gets seen more in Google’s results.
This is often confused with PPC or Pay-Per-Click marketing using Google Ads, whereby you simply pay Google to appear on their results pages, but this is not SEO, it’s just another way to get seen on Google.
What do SEO experts do?
A search engine optimisation professional will carry out a broad range of tasks to help a business achieve greater visibility on Google. This includes but isn’t limited to…
- Strategy and keyword research – helping identify the best phrases to target and how to pursue them.
- Content creation – helping to create new pages that may be required in order to compete for all the target phrases.
- Content optimisation – configuring technical aspects of important pages to ensure they include the target phrases e.g. page titles, page headings, URLs, image alt text, etc.
- External website promotion – marketing the website so it receives mentions and backlinks from other websites, which is essential for SEO success, particularly in competitive markets.
- Analysing data & reporting – demonstrating the visibility of the website on Google over time and reporting the success/failure of initiatives.
What is SEO writing?
SEO writing means writing content for a website that’s influenced by data about how people search.
For example, if you were writing content for a shop that sold doughnuts you might research the popular phrases people use to find doughnuts online and include those within your copy to give you a greater chance of being matched to a relevant search.
What is an SEO audit?
The contents of an SEO audit vary from one SEO company to the next but should include:
- a review of a website’s current performance in Google’s organic (or non-paid) results.
- a summary of whether the website meets various technical requirements and any identified errors.
- a list of improvements that should be made to improve the performance of the website in organic search engine results.
What kind of SEO works?
These are some of the tactics I believe improve search engine performance every single time when done correctly.
- Keyword research to understand all the different ways people search for your products and services. Armed with this information you’re able to identify the content requirements of your website, carry out on-page optimisation accordingly and ensure you will at least be included within Google’s results for those target searches.
- Technical improvements such as making the website more accessible to mobile users or speeding up the load times of pages will also increase your chances of being placed prominently within the results.
- Quality content will usually rise to the top. Look at what competitors are doing and try to offer richer, deeper information. On a similar note, analyse the results pages for your target searches to see which types of pages/websites Google is currently ranking prominently and whether your content is suitable for that particular search.
There are plenty more tactics that work (and just as many that don’t), but this would end up being a very long article.
If you have any questions regarding SEO that haven’t been answered here, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
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How to get Google Ads reinstated after ‘Malicious or Unwanted Software’ disapproval 24 May 2020 7:58 AM (4 years ago)
I recently had a frustrating experience trying to get some Google Ads reinstated that had been disapproved due to ‘Malicious or unwanted software’, so I thought it might be useful to share the process that eventually got them back online.
Step 1 – Identifying the issue
Google didn’t tell me what the ‘malicious or unwanted software’ they’d identified was and having examined the site it wasn’t obvious.
There were no signs of a hack or any significant changes to the content, so it was perplexing why Google had suddenly developed a problem with a site that they’d had no problem with for a year previously.
With no obvious fix, I had to contact Google directly, which I did via a Live Chat here. You may be able to phone them for a quicker response, but this was at the height of the Coronavirus outbreak and their services were limited.
Here I spoke to what seemed like a low-level operator, but they were able to at least tell me what was triggering the error.
Incidentally, the software they deemed malicious was an embedded login for a secure file transfer system, which was in no way malicious, so don’t be surprised if what they’ve flagged isn’t the result of a security breach.
With this information I could at least take an action.
Step 2 – Removing the code/software
I could have tried my luck with arguing with them over the validity of the software, but given that it wasn’t essential, I decided to just remove it from the website, which took about 2 minutes.
If you’re not in a position to get rid of whatever Google has a problem with and/or can’t justify why that code is in place, you’ve got a problem to solve.
But if you can get rid of it yourself or get a developer to do so, then you’re on the road to recovery.
Step 3 – Resubmit your ads
Depending on the issue you can either resubmit your Ads by finding the ‘Appeal’ link as noted here or simply making a minor edit to your existing ads, which will automatically trigger a fresh inspection.
There was no ‘Appeal’ link so I had to do the latter and this was where the frustration really ramped up.
Step 4 – Making sure Google deliver
I modified the ads and sent them off for approval and believed, having removed the code requested without argument they’d be re-activated. This didn’t happen.
I had to go back to the Live Chat several more times over the course of 10 excruciating days, explaining that everything was fixed and asking for a response.
They repeatedly told me they had just ‘rescanned the site’ and the malicious code was still present, but it simply wasn’t. At this point, I was really pulling my hair out and wondering if I’d ever escape the merrygoround.
At one point they also asked me to upload a screenshot from Google Search Console to prove the site was clean, which was made all the more complicated by the fact the Live Chat had no image upload option, meaning I had to put the image in Google Drive and send them a link.
Eventually, after enough kicking and screaming it was pushed up the food chain and I received an email telling me the ads would me active in the next two hours after a successful manual review, which mercifully – they were.
Bottom line: Find the issue if it’s obvious and fix it. If it’s not obvious get onto Google for more detail. Remove the problem and resubmit your ads. And crucially, keep nudging Google if there’s no movement because it will accelerate the process.
Good luck.
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Blue Florist Launch New Site For Increased Organic Foothold 6 May 2020 6:06 AM (4 years ago)
A client recently launched their new website and have since started gaining increased traction on Google.
Blue Florist, located down in Kingston-Upon-Thames are hoping to dominate the organic search results within their catchment area, while expanding beyond their existing territory.
With a new platform and greater control of the website coupled with deeper analysis of the data, they’re now well placed to move forward as an online retailer.
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Ceramic Logistics become Plexus Freight 20 Apr 2018 3:25 AM (6 years ago)
Congratulations to my client Ceramic Logistics on successfully rebranding to Plexus Freight. It’s never an easy decision to change the name of your business but there was an obvious issue with ‘ceramic’ aligning the company with one specific niche when their service is much broader, so a rebrand was definitely the right course of action.
From an SEO perspective, SEO can help drive free traffic from Google and also having ‘Freight’ within the brand name and URL is helpful as we look to pursue keywords containing the term so I would expect this change to impact positively on performance once the new domain is bedded in on Google.
It’s always difficult to predict how Google will react to a change of domain even when all the necessary precautions are taken (301 redirects, Google change of address submission, etc), but the early signs are the transition has been painless.
Fortunately, the site itself wasn’t changing in terms of structure or layout with the existing content simply re-skinned to match the new branding and with the help of my go-to developer, all the necessary tasks were systematically checked off the list.
I’ve been through this process with other clients several times before and this was certainly the most painless of those experiences.
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DGN Driving 4 Apr 2018 6:16 AM (7 years ago)
I’m happy to announce Wolverhampton-based DGN Driving as a new client. I’ll be looking after their presence on Google and looking to improve the conversion rate of their website over the next 12 months.
Digital marketing is made a lot easier when you’re working with a great business and it’s clear DGN are one of the best driving schools in the West Midlands, a fact proven by the hundreds of reviews you can read online here.
If you’re looking to book driving lessons in Wolverhampton or anywhere across the West Midlands definitely check out their offers or call them direct on 01902 213213.
On a personal note, I’ve been looking to represent more local businesses in Wolverhampton, Birmingham and the wider Midlands region (with most of my current client base dotted around the country everywhere other than right on my doorstep), so it’s great to have DGN on board.
If you’re a business based in the Midlands and would like to discuss your digital marketing, please do get in touch, as I’d love to help.
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I’m Hosting a Charity Screening of The Running Man 6 Oct 2017 6:12 AM (7 years ago)
At 3pm on Saturday 11th November I’ll be hosting a screening of The Running Man at The Electric in Birmingham. This isn’t quite as random as it sounds I promise.
I’m ‘running’ the London Marathon next year for Whizz Kidz – who provide disabled children with the essential wheelchairs and other mobility equipment they need to lead fun and active childhoods – and this event is a bit of a fundraiser to help me towards my £2k sponsorship goal, I was able to find a great idea from the GoFundMe website this year.
This critically acclaimed 1987 masterpiece artfully speculates what life might be like in 2017, so it’s also a good opportunity to reflect on where humanity has succeeded and failed.
Anyway…
If you can make it, I’d be incredibly grateful. I’m limited (ha) to 75 seats, so on the off-chance I can attract such a large audience, it will be first come first served.
As I’m hosting this privately, I technically can’t ask for a donation in return for a ticket but I’m hoping people will make a donation (roughly the price of a cinema ticket) in return for coming along. The page to donate is:
https://whizz-kidz-london-marathon18.everydayhero.com/uk/thomas/wizard/donate
If you can’t make it but can still donate, that’s equally great and I love you.
If you can attend please:
1. Email me (tom@thomasbaughmedia.com) to confirm you’re coming and how many seats you want me to reserve for your group. Feel free to come along solo as we’re a friendly group.
2. Once I’ve confirmed, make your donation (if you feel like it) using the above link or by going here.
I’ll be sending an email around to everyone who is coming a few days before just to reaffirm everything so nothing is left to chance.
Cheers
Thomas
Some added notes…
* PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE If you’re coming, let me know along with precisely how many people you’re bringing (if any). The one situation I want to avoid is someone turning up and not being allowed entry if I’m above capacity.
* It goes without saying but this is an R-Rated Arnie film so there’s a certain degree of violence and bad language. I would hate for anyone to turn up and be offended by the content.
* Following on from the above, obviously not one for the kids.
* If you’re wondering why the screening is at 3pm-5pm, that’s the latest any private cinema will commit to a private booking on a Saturday.
* Food and drink (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) are available at the venue. I’m also hoping a few people will hang around after the film to have some drinks in Birmingham.
* You can view the trailer for the film here:
* For more information about the venue go here – http://www.theelectric.co.uk/
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