SEO or search engine optimisation is essentially you optimising your website so that you can get found on search engines. Google being the biggest by far.

More and more people are using google to search for businesses like yours, so how can you ensure that your website gets found.

Here are a few of the basic things you can do to get found!

1. Register your business on google

You’ll need a google account to be able to do this – in essence a gmail account. When you’re already logged into gmail, google ‘google my business’ and follow the steps provided.

Voila your business is registered with google!

You can also register on Bing by googling ‘bing places for business’

2. Ask your customer for google reviews

Getting good reviews on your google listing will improve your search rankings, so make it part of your strategy to ask your customer if they will leave you a google review.

3. Register your business elsewhere!

Having your business registered on other sites will also improve your rankings. Think about Facebook, Yell and 118. Could you also register your business in local places, for example your local Chamber of Commerce.

4. Create a separate page for each service or product you offer

This means that each product you have will be indexed separately, giving search the opportunity to send people to your various services. Having them listed all on one page gives you less opportunity to turn up for different search results.

5. Optimise each page for better search results

On wordpress you can use a fantastic plugin called ‘yoast’ that takes you through a simple traffic light system to optimise each page for a keyword that people might search for you on the search.

You only want one keyword, or long-tail keyword (essentially more descriptive like black cat, rather than cat) for each website page you have. Otherwise your pages will be competing against each other.

For squarespace, click the cog next to each page and then click SEO and add in your descriptions and keywords there.

You’ll also want to make sure that all your images are either ‘alt tagged’ in wordpress or have a name in squarespace. This is because google can’t read images, so you’ll want to let google know what that image in – it also means your images can start turning up in image search.

When thinking about keywords, think about the type of things people would search for when looking for a business like yours. Tools like ‘answer the public’ can help you with this.

6. Get other websites to link to yours

Google likes it if your website is linked to by external sites. Some quick wins are all your social media profiles and any local directories. Have a think if you could guest blog on other sites, linking to yours, or any PR opportunities you could grab.

Plus internal links within your own website help too! And linking from your website to other websites!

7. Use the suite of google tools

Get your google analytics on. Search google analytics and register your website. You’ll get a code that you’ll need to add to your site. For wordpress the ‘Monster Insights’ plugin is good for this, for squarespace, you’ll add the code in ‘advanced’ and ‘code injection’.

Once you’ve got access to google analytics you can do the same with google console.

These tools will give you so much useful data about your website!

8. Does your website load quickly?

Google search is not a fan of slow websites! If it doesn’t, then you need to change this really quickly. It’s likely though that if this is an issue with your website, then you also have a whole range of others that are causing you to not be seen on Google currently. The best thing that you can do there is look into affordable web design packages that will help enhance your website as a whole.

9. Is your website mobile friendly?

Google isn’t a fan of non-responsive sites!

10. Is your website secure?

You’ll need to see https:/ in front of your website when it’s loaded – if it says 'unsecure' you’ll need to fix that. Contact squarespace if you have a squarespace site. I’m not sure for wordpress, you might need to do some googling.

This is becoming more important, some servers won’t let you open insecure websites anymore – so if it’s isn’t secure your website may be locked for certain potential customers.

11. Do you have a blog?

Blogs work on so many levels! Google loves regularly update websites, so by writing a regular blog and adding it to your website you’ll be showing google this is a live website, that is loved and that has great content. Plus you get to write blogs about the types of things your customers are interested and get found that way on google too.

Here’s more advice on blogging.

12. Use youtube

Google owns youtube, so it will like you if you use youtube and then embed those youtube videos into your site.

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