Are you about to set your website live on the search engines, and looking for information on how to SEO your website? This article has been written to provide information to website owners who are new to the field of SEO.

Starting a new business is quite difficult, especially if you are in a high competition field. Many businesses tend to fail within the first five years of trading. But even the most established businesses can fail, if they do not keep their products and services updated, as per the popular trends of society.

Finding a successful digital marketing strategy can also be quite difficult, and with an abundance of conflicting information on the Internet and in books, it can be a little overwhelming. Finding the correct SEO information is crucial if you are new to digital marketing. Once your website is SEO’d correctly and is high up in the Search Engine Results Pages’ “SERP”, your website will be very successful, as organic searches are end to attract more viewers than paid advertising traffic. Also, organic searches tend to build a lot more trust with customers. Than of those of paid advertising links. After all, to have a successful business you need to build a solid foundation of trust.

In this article, we will be outlining most of the ethical ways to SEO your new business website. This information has been compiled by our many years of quality content writing and technical SEO implementation. This information will help you to implement high quality SEO initiatives to your website. Or it will help you to gain knowledge on SEO if you are looking to employ a technical SEO company, therefore, you will have a better understanding of what SEO solutions they will be implementing on your company website.

What is meant by the term SEO?

What is SEO? Well here is your answer? SEO stands for search engine optimisation, this fundamentally means, optimising your website for the major search engines. This is done by; writing high quality content, on page technical programming, off page technical SEO, building links, analyzing conversions, analyzing analytics, analyzing data, being authoritative, credible image, website user friendly, mobile viewing friendly, the list goes on.

An experienced SEO consultant will be able to advise you on how to SEO your particular website, so it will be successful on the Internet. They will be able to help you identify the best way to SEO your site, there are many ways a website can be optimised, depending on its genre. eCommerce websites are SEO’d differently to that of brochure type information websites. And high competition websites are SEO’d differently to that of a low competition niche website. Weaknesses need to be analyzed, and opportunities need to be discovered.

A way to standardize the term SEO, is if you relate a search engine to being an index, of web pages. Now a search engine will try to find the most appropriate website, that has the best high quality content, and is deemed a trusted source of information. To make it to the top of the list, you need to make sure your website is the best quality website on the Internet for your particular niche. Whatever questions your customers need answering, you must be able to answer it, thus your website will be the go to place for useful information regarding your niche.

A small business website owner should concentrate on the following SEO points:

• Website design. A user friendly website is essential
• Mobile. A mobile friendly user experience is essential
• Content. The website’s content should portray authority and confidence on the subject.
• Content marketing. Informative content rich blogs will help you to be an authoritative source of information.
• On-page. Meta optimization is an essential element of being found high in the SERPS.
• Local SEO. Local businesses require local SEO.
• Authority building. Link from other websites are considered high authoritative trust signals.
• Credibility. Case studies, portfolios, reviews, and testimonials Will help you to build a good online and offline reputation.
• SEO fundamentals. It is important to research all areas of SEO, thus making sure your SEO implementation will be effective.
• Correct SEO plan. With smaller business SEO is can be simplified to content, technical SEO, and links.

You may ask, do I need to SEO my small business website?

Well to answer this, let us ask what do search engines actually do? A search engine is a way for people to find information on the Internet, via a search engine of their choice. Now, this way of finding information has grown to be exponential over the years, and now is the number one way of finding information. So obviously if you have a well placed website on the Internet, you will gain new customers who are looking for your product or service. But to be placed high on the search engines, you need to employ a SEO professional.

What should I consider before I have SEO implemented on my new website?

• Finance: Obviously SEO is not a cheap product, and do you have the time to SEO your website yourself?
• Success: The success of an SEO campaign is not instant and can take a long time to see results
• Advert competition: There will be quite a lot of adverts competing for the same keywords
• Established competition: You may face competition with established websites thus making it difficult to compete

So yes, online visibility is a great thing for your new business, but realistically it may not be easily obtainable. You may want to research other areas of gaining search engine presence, such as a PPC campaign. A PPC campaign may bring a steady influx of new customers to your business, while you are pursuing your organic SEO campaign in the background (stealth SEO campaign).

SEO is defiantly needed by almost every business, if only the very basics. Basic SEO can include; quality copy, technical SEO – such as well formatted title tags, and image tags. Thus, improving your customers’ user experience. Well written title tags will let your customers know what your web pages are about, and well written image tags will help improve the user experience of visitors who are visually impaired. But yes, a full SEO campaign, can be quite costly, especially if you employ an SEO company to perform the SO, rather than do it yourself. But even if you do it your self, you may find you run out of time, and can not continue, after all, there are only so many hours in the day. So consider your marketing budget, and your time allowances, then decide whether you should implement a SEO campaign now or in the future.

Sometimes utilizing a combined approach to online marketing is best practice. So, you may want to promote your website via the use of PPC, and organic SEO. Once your website is achieving effective search engine visibility, you can decrease the PPC spend.

Realistically, your website may not see organic SEO positive results for months, but the sooner you start marketing your website on the search engines the sooner you will see results, in essence, it can be a great investment for a business.

How should you choose an SEO provider?

Choosing the correct SEO provider can be quite tough. First of all, you should do a little ground work on the freelancer or company you are thinking of placing business with. How long have they been established within the SEO field, do they have any reviews, or maybe a portfolio of websites they have performed SEO on? – however, with GDPR regulations your SEO company may not be able to answer these questions.

The below questions will help you source a reliable SEO consultant, and will enable you to be a more educated buyer.

How will your company improve our SEO efforts?

This question should be answered covering the implementation of; SEO audits, SEO technical fixes, on page & off page optimization, page speed up, mobile friendly check, UX check, content analyses, keyword research, link building, and local SEO implantation.

Do you specialize in certain types of SEO?

SEO covers a lot of elements, for instance; technical, national, organic, local, links, content, and UX. Some SEO companies only focus on certain areas, such as content. So it is a good idea to find out exactly what services they provide.

How will you manage your time on my SEO campaign?

It is a good idea to find out how an SEO company will allocate their time allowance to the SEO campaign. An SEO company should provide a proposal outlining what they will cover over the first 3 months of the campaign. This should include technical audits, fixes, content creation, link building, content optimisation, and on page optimisation.

Do you adhere to all of the search engine guidelines?

The answer to this question is very important, because, if the SEO company uses none ethical tactics your website may incur a penalty from the search engines, thus your website will drop page ranks or be deleted from their index. A good SEO company will be compliant with all of the rules and regulations the major search engine companies outline.

Do you provide SEO metrics?

To track if your SEO campaign is progressing positively, you need to see some proof that the positions of your website pages are improving on the search engines. Such metrics should be graphs detailing the positions of the keywords that are being targeted, extra content being created for the website, the number of links being created, and a list of internal links. It is a good idea to ask for search, and visitor metrics of the website as well.

Do you have contracts?

If you are new to SEO, it may be best to place business with a company that do not have contracts, and instead provide a retainer service. A retainer service is where you will pay the company and they will perform the SEO work that needs to be done.

Do you provide reports?

It is always advisable to ask an SEO company for reports on the work they have done on your website. This will allow you to assess what progress has been made, and what work will be done the following month. An SEO report should also include the progress of the campaign, and metrics.

What are your backlink strategies?

This question will allow you to determine what the SEO company’s backlink strategy is. A good answer to this is, the company adhere to the search engine guidelines. Thus, links such as site wide links, and hidden links, are not used. Instead, they adhere to organic link building, such as blog writing.

When do you Review the campaign?

Your future SEO provider will normally provide a review every three months. A good provider will be able to show improved positions around the six month time frame. Hence you will be wanting to find out what changes will be made to the campaign over the next few months, to complement what efforts have already been made.

Can you SEO a website yourself?

Well as with most things you can try to perform SEO yourself, but it really comes down to the equation of, do you actually have the time to perform SEO yourself. It can be quite a lot to take on, if you are also running the business. A lot of new business owners go out of business because they take to much on, and burn the candle at both ends. If you, however, do have the time to allocate to the SEO of your website, there are plenty of good resources on the Internet. We would recommend that all business owners educate themselves on SEO, as it will make you more of an educated buyer.

SEO tools for small businesses

So you are going to have a go at implementing SEO on your website yourself, we have listed a few software tools that may help you. Most of the professional SEO tools charge a monthly subscription, and if you use a few, as many SEO companies do. The cost can mount up, and may cost as much as an SEO company would charge you to carry out SEO on your website.

Screaming Frog this software package will crawl your website checking and providing intelligence on; broken links, meta tags, url’s and much more. If you have a large website, over 500 pages the cost for the package is £150 pa. If your website is less than 500 pages the software is free to use.

MOZ Moz is a more feature rich software product than Screaming Frog, such as keyword research, link analysis, and SERP checking. This software solution is a great all rounder, and definitely, worth using, they are also offering a free trial.

Majestic/Ahrefs these tools scan your website and produce a report of all the websites that are linking to your website. Which is great if you are looking to build a link building campaign to gain authority on the search engines.

Google Search Console This is a great resource for checking your website against the Google guidelines.

Ubersuggest is great for checking keywords, and finding out what keywords are being searched for that relate to your business niche.

Google is a great resource, but it is advised to cross reference any information you find relating to SEO. Especially if you are new to the SEO field, the last thing you want to do is take someone’s advice, and then incur a search engine penalty.

It is important to add, none of the above SEO tools will perform SEO on your website, nor will they write content for you. But they will provide a brilliant resource, and suggest ideas that will help you improve the ranking of your website on the search engines.

Your SEO checklist

When you start your SEO campaign it is advisable to adhere to the following checklist:

• Register with the major search engines
• Add your business to Google My Business Listing
• Research long tail keywords
• Research short keyword research
• Concentrate on low keyword density pages
• Research your keywords via PPC
• Optimise your meta tags
• Optimise your images
• Build links from similar niche websites

This is not a comprehensive list, but if you follow the list you will see improvements in your search engine rankings.

Conclusion

We hope we have answered your questions regarding small business SEO, as discussed in this article, organic SEO is not a quick solution to gaining a high search presence. It takes time, and can take over a year if you are trying to create a page one presence for high competition keywords. If your website is quite new, it may be best to concentrate on long tail keywords to start, and also implement a PPC campaign.