seo workshop for small businesses

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SEO basics workshop for a group of small independent businesses

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Post on 10-Nov-2014

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This was a workshop delivered by Fourth Day PR to give a basic overview of SEO for a group of independent businesses in Stockport. This idea was for them to understand the basics of how to get their own websites appearing in search engines for relevant searches.

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: SEO workshop for small businesses

SEO basics workshop for a group of small independent businesses

Page 2: SEO workshop for small businesses

Search engine optimisation is the process of having your website found by relevant searches in search engines.

Ensuring potential customers can find your business online

Getting conversions and ROI from your website.

Not just focussed on just getting to number one on Google and getting irrelevant traffic.

Intro: what is SEO?

Page 3: SEO workshop for small businesses

Background: research

Before you get started, do a little research.

How do people find your website?

What words or phrases do they search for to find services/ products like yours?

Remember: it may not be what you assume they search for.

Tools: Google’s keyword planner is now in

Adwords, so you must set up an account to access

this.

Page 4: SEO workshop for small businesses

Background: competitor research

It’s very useful to see how your competitors are ranking and what activity they are doing.

Search for your/ their key words and key terms and see where they rank in various search engines.

Have a look at their meta data to find out which key words/ phrases they want to rank for.

Find out which social media channels they use and do they have an active blog?

What backlinks do they have? (to be explained later!)

Page 5: SEO workshop for small businesses

Like any project, you need to set objectives and keep track of your processes in order to analyse your progress.

SEO work is not a set process and varies from site to site. It is a good idea to track what you do and how it affects your rankings.

Initially, decide on just a few keywords to rank for and see how you go.

Background: set some objectives

Page 6: SEO workshop for small businesses

On-site work: meta data

Meta data sits in the back end of your website and it tells search engines what you do and who you are.

This is one of the most important things to get right because it has to match up to all the other pieces of information that you provide for search engines as well as your on-page copy.

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On-site work: meta data

Click view >> developer >> view source (in Chrome)

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On-site work: meta data

Here is a close-up of our meta-data

Page 9: SEO workshop for small businesses

Meta tag: Who you are and what you do in 66 characters

Description tag: A well-written sentence encapsulating who you are and what you do in 160 characters

Keywords tag: List of main keywords. It is agreed that Google no longer uses these. However you can put these in if you like.

NB. Characters includes blank spaces as well as letters.

On-site work: meta data

Page 10: SEO workshop for small businesses

On-page copy is the text on your web pages.

This is read by search engines BUT also what your customers read.

So it must be well-written, clear and informative.

Put your keywords and phrases near the top of the text. This should happen naturally anyway.

If a search engine can’t understand what you do then your customers won’t either!

On-site work: on-page copy

Page 11: SEO workshop for small businesses

Search engines cannot see photos so use meta-data to tell them what the image is of

Make sure all images uploaded to the website are labelled correctly with meta data filled in.

Eg. Fourth Day PR logo file:

WRONG: Image_1005_2013_10_15.png

RIGHT: Fourth_Day_PR_agency.png

On-site work: optimise images

Page 12: SEO workshop for small businesses

Off-site work: Google/ Bing

Tell them your website exists!

Submit your URL to:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?hl=en_uk&pli=1

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url

Page 13: SEO workshop for small businesses

Off-site work: Webmaster tools

Enables you to register your website with the search engine

Submit a site map to search engine to help it crawl your content

It will tell you if they find any errors:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Page 14: SEO workshop for small businesses

Off-site work: Google Maps/ Places

Make sure you have an entry on Google Maps – now called Google Places for Business.

This is useful for both customers and search engines to authenticate and locate your business.

Submit a new entry: http://www.google.co.uk/business/placesforbusiness/

Validate your entry by requesting a postcard or a phone call.

Fill out all data fields including key words/ phrases and add all contact details and website.

Page 15: SEO workshop for small businesses

Off-site work: Google+ business page

Now with your Google map entry, you will automatically get a Google+ page.

Google+ is a social media network and it is widely believed to have influencing factors for SEO (not surprising as it’s owned by Google!).

You can add people to your ‘circles’ and post links, messages, images and other information via your page.

Page 16: SEO workshop for small businesses

Inbound links/ backlinks are links to your website or web pages from another website.

You may have heard of dodgy link building but what is it?

Search engines, Google in particular, historically gave preference to websites with the most links.

This led to various practices for creating inbound links, such as link farms.

These have now been penalised in recent updates.

Link-building

Page 17: SEO workshop for small businesses

So how do I know what to avoid now?

Easy! Search is all about creating the best user experience.

Don’t link from a website that looks like a spammy website, that isn’t genuine or that you wouldn’t happily show your customers.

You should focus on getting quality links with relevant and useful information.

Link-building

Page 18: SEO workshop for small businesses

Find out what backlinks you have already OR see what backlinks your competitors have.

www.opensiteexplorer.org

You can see a small amount of information with this tool without having to pay.

Link-building

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Directories are a good way to create inbound links, but also have extra value as customers may search them.

Link-building: directories

Yell.com

Yelp.co.uk

Thomsonlocal.com

BOTW.org.uk (£)

Dir.yahoo.com (£)

Fourheatons.co.uk

Every industry has its own directories, trade bodies and associations, which you can list your business and website on.

Page 20: SEO workshop for small businesses

Make sure copy is well-written and includes all key information and your key phrases.

Ensure key phrases are written naturally into the copy so it reads well for consumers.

If there’s an option to upload a photo/ logo then do it.

Fill out all fields/ complete the listing.

Don’t forget to amend it if you change location, branding etc.

Link-building: directories

Page 21: SEO workshop for small businesses

Link-building: content outreach

Content outreach is the process of trying to build a relationship with another blog, website or publication so they will publish content about you and include a link.

This is a big part of what we do in PR. We write thought-leadership articles and guest blog posts on behalf of our clients and place them within relevant magazines. We also try to negotiate inbound links.

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Content creation

Search is all about creating good content and a good user experience.

But what does this mean?

Businesses that create content online have a chance to prove they are experts in their field.

If they are actively doing this, it’s a good indicator to a search engine to rank them higher than competitors.

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Content creation

What type of content can I create?

Blog posts: news, how-to guides, industry comment

Infographics: facts and figures brought to life

Videos: interviews, clips of trade shows, stop-motion

Podcasts: mini-radio shows

Page 24: SEO workshop for small businesses

Social media

Why is this important?

Communication tool direct to your customers

Raising brand awareness and brand messages

Social media use and shares are a signal to search engines that your business is active and trustworthy.

Contributes to your link-building, reputation-building and authority-building processes.

Page 25: SEO workshop for small businesses

Social media tips

Find the channels that are most relevant / used by your audience.

Fill out profiles with all details, key phrases and links to your website.

Choose one or two channels and do them well – rather than trying to do everything and doing it badly.

Make sure your strategy and objectives link back to brand messages and marketing strategy.

They are not sales channels, so messages have to be subtle.

Provide interesting content to your followers – from your own blog as well as third party content.

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Conclusions

SEO should be part of your wider communications and marketing plans. Make sure all messages are aligned across any marketing channel, both offline and online.

Strive to be the best in your industry and let that show in your online activity.

See search engines as a major customer. They want to know that your business is trustworthy, genuine and an authority in your industry.

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ANY QUESTIONS?

For more information please contact:

Nikki Scrivener / Carolyn Hughes

[email protected]/ [email protected]

020 7403 4411

www.fourthday.co.uk

Want to find out more? Book us for a one-to-one

session!