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Our SEO Guide for small businesses
These are some of the top factors that will determine search engine performance for a website:
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⁃ Direct website visits
⁃ Regular and relevant content to your industry
⁃ Click through rates (how many people click your google listing or google advert)
⁃ Time on site
⁃ Bounce rate (amount of people leaving your site not long after arriving)
⁃ Number and quality of backlinks (links from other sites to your site)
⁃ Https (secure site)
⁃ Overall content relevance and keyword usage
⁃ Font size in main content area
⁃ Number of images
⁃ Total social media activities
If you are trying to build your search engine positioning yourself without any assistance the best advice we can give:
- Get an SEO expert to set up your site initially for a number of keywords (very important, otherwise you won’t be found by google)
- Make sure when you are uploading images to the site they are small in size and all under 300kb ideally
- Regularly blog (once or twice a week if you can)
- Encourage website visits wherever you can (attractive email signature links, email marketing, with links back to your website etc)
- Regular social media posting linking to your website, while also aiming to build your social followers
- Write Regular and relevant content to your industry on your blog, following our guidance below on how to optimise the posts
- Aim to get backlinks back from other websites to yours, but mainly focus on your industry. So if you are an architect, then a link from the RIBA website will be valued very highly by google and will be much more valuable than a link in the local business listing.
- Check your site is secure with Https
These will give you a good basis, however for maximum value you should focus on strong keyword strategy and implementation as listed below,
Our Monthly SEO Activity Plan
–Content Plan
At the beginning of each month I would recommend putting together a content plan for the client based on the target keywords for that month. This content plan should include recommended new pages, new blog posts & any outreach content that you wish to distribute.
To ensure that all content produced is targeted, the keywords should be the key focus in any content planning procedures.
Please request the workbook: Content Plan Template, from us if you would like an example.
This can be used each month to determine what content is produced and will allow you to plan effectively, considering the target keywords.
How to Plan Content
Keyword: Select a keyword that has a lower search volume as it is likely to have less competition and more likely to achieve a ranking for.
Title: Write a title for your blog post that includes the chosen keyword. It is best placed at the start of the article title.
Page Title: Make sure that your title is short and concise. It must be under 70 characters in length and should end with the company name.
Meta Description: Write a short description for your article that outlines the content. It should be under 156 characters in length and should also include the keyword somewhere within it.
URL: Write a URL for your blogpost. The URL should be short and concise. The shorter the better! – It is also best to include the keyword within the URL.
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Blogging Content Production
Once all the content for the month has been planned out and any approval given that is needed from the client. You can start writing the content.
When writing SEO content, you must consider the following SEO factors:
- In a 500-word article, you should try to include the target keyword 2-3 times
- Try to include keyword variations that mean the same thing, but use different words
- Try to break up the content with 2-3 sub-headings
- Use the target keyword within at least 1 sub-heading
- Include images within content (remember to add the keyword within the ALT tag)
- Include an internal link within the content to another post on the client’s website
- Include an external link within content to a useful external website (High authority)
- Try to include a call-to-action at the end of the article.
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Blogging Content Publishing
When publishing the content on the website blog, make sure that you have YOAST SEO PLUGIN installed. This will allow you to enter the optimised Meta Data that you have already written in the content plan.
YOAST SEO PLUGIN will also help you provide any further optimisations to the content when you are uploading into the WordPress CMS. It uses a traffic light system to prompt you to include certain SEO elements such as Image Alt Tags, Internal & External Links, Keyword Placements etc – All of which you should have in place if you follow the instructions above.
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Blogging Content Distribution
Once each of the insight’s articles have been written and published, they need to be distributed. This will help get them indexed as soon as possible as well as help drive traffic to them.
- Share your articles across all your owned social media accounts
- Submit your article to any social bookmarking sites you have accounts with (https://onebasemedia.co.uk/blog/top-social-bookmarking-sites/)
- Send out your monthly posts in any email marketing correspondence / newsletters you mail out to your email list.
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Build Location Citation References
When trying to rank for local search terms, especially using a local Google MyBusiness listing, you must have as many local citations listed on third party websites as possible. This is a direct ranking factor as it shows how established you are in any targeted location.
It is recommended that you distribute 5-10 new citations each month
Please see a list of top citation destinations via the link below:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/citations-by-category
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The article was written by ClearBrand, June 2021.
To get in contact about working with ClearBrand on a project,
please call +44 (0)118 959 9284 or email info@clearbrand.co.uk.
