5 SEO tips to help your small business in 2019
We understand that to many, search engine optimisation (or SEO if you’re geeky like us) is a tough thing to get your head around and can seem scary to some, so we have come up with 5 quick SEO tips to apply to your website to help you get more traffic to your website.
SEO Tip 1 – Page speed
Page speed is important with Google and Google likes a speedy site. You can check your websites page speed with websites like Google Page speed insights, Pingdom and GT Metrix. We advise using GT Metrix as it may help you understand any issues it may find with your site. We also advise you to sign up for a free account as you can choose the server region your testing your website from.
So for example, if your a UK business and most of the traffic received is from the UK, you can change the test server to London to give a more accurate load time for your website. (if you don’t know where your traffic is coming from, or how much you’re getting to your website, you need to set up Google Analytics on your site now! SEO without this is like driving blindfolded!)
There is a lot of information that can pop up on this page, but to keep it simple and down to basics. Ideally, you want a minimum of B’s for page speed and YSlow score, your full load time needs to be less than 5 seconds for Google and ideally under 3 seconds. For a normal business website, your page size needs to be under 3mb and fewer DNS requests than 50.
As you can see in the example image above is our GT Metrix score taken at the time of writing this post. Don’t just take one result, do this on a monthly basis at least as this result depends a lot on your hosting as much as how well your website has been designed and optimised! Taking a reading every month will help to give you an idea of what your average page results look like.
Your website hosting provider will also affect your page scores too, make sure you’re with a decent hosting company as they can have a big effect on your load times and performance scores.
SEO Tip 2 – SSL Certificate (a quick fix)
It’s a simple thing but make sure you have an SSL certificate on your website, so many websites out there still don’t have an SSL on their website.
If you don’t know what an SSL certificate is, it stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is an added bit of security for your website visitors. Google also likes this and is a scoring factor for good SEO. We have also written about SSL’s and why you need one in a blog post that you can find here.
So why is an SSL good for your SEO? Well, Since October 1st, 2018 all websites without an SSL have been marked as unsafe by the search giants in an attempt to secure peoples details that may use something as simple as the contact form on your website. You can find out if you have an SSL on your website by looking for the little padlock next to your websites URL
SEO Tip 3 – Get on local business directories and any specific for your business’ niche (Backlinks)
It’s important for SEO to get on your local business directories and any that are specific to your business niche. We’re not saying that this will drive a ton of business back to your website, but Google likes it when your website has backlinks and not just any old backlinks but ones that it sees as an authority or reputable.
So get on your local directories and make sure all your business information is correct and that you have a link back to your website. Also make sure you’re on directories like Yel, foursquare, Thompson local to name but a few, this will help Google to see that your not just another website taking up space on the internet and that you are a real business online.
SEO Tip 4 – Keyword Research
Make sure you are using the right keywords (2 per page of your website) and make sure you are sprinkling them around your pages naturally as Google doesn’t like keyword spamming, this is bad SEO! If your website isn’t compelling to read or navigate, Google will see this and drop you down the pecking order for your keywords as people are not interested in what you have on your website for those given keywords.
Our tip is to pick 2 keywords per page, build your content around utilising those words and if your writing in a natural and engaging way for your visitors, they stay on your website longer and Google thinks “ye that website must be a good pick for those keywords and it was the correct one to display in search results.” this will start to bump you up the list and is good SEO!
SEO Tip 5 – Blog
Some people don’t like the word Blog, so call it your news page or whatever makes you feel better. Having regular updates on your website in the way of a blog is another good SEO trick as Google likes new content and doesn’t like a static website taking up space on the internet.
If you can research keywords that are tailored to your business or organisations website and write some content about it fairly regularly on your website’s blog, Google will see this and is more likely to serve it up in searches, then the more clicks you get, the more Google will see your website as an authority on that matter and start to push you up the rankings.
Sum Up
So, to break it down;
- You don’t want a bloated website and you need your site to load under 3 seconds.
- You NEED an SSL certificate on your website and this is probably the easiest quick win you can get done today to help give a little boost to your website’s SEO.
- Get your business on the local business directories, know the keywords that you want to be ranking for in google, what do you think people search for when looking for your services?
- Finally, if you don’t do it already, start a blog. Post something once a month if that’s all you can do for now, but it’s important that you are seen to be updating content on your website. Don’t expect big changes overnight, it will take time but it’s an important thing to do to help establish yourself and your website as an authority on Google.
