So, we’ve covered our 5 top simple steps to optimising your web presence via search marketing. This time around, we’re going to look in more detail about how you can improve your business’s positions within the search results by enhancing your web pages and onpage SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Popular search engines such as Google and Bing are looking to serve the most relevant results for their users. This means we need to ensure our landing pages provide as much helpful information as possible to align our site with the terms we wish to appear for. We’ve highlighted the 5 key steps in ensuring you give your website the best chance of appearing above your competition.
1. Content Relevance
It sounds like common sense, but if you wish to rank for a search term relating to your business and services you have to ensure that your website’s landing pages reflect the terms you are targeting.
To do this, you need to be creating original content for each of your landing pages. For instance, if you are an accountancy firm offering bookkeeping services within a particular location, make sure you talk about bookkeeping and the elements which go into the service you provide on your bookkeeping page.
Consider having a landing page for each of your services. The more specific and relevant the content is, the more the search engines and ultimately your users, can understand the intricacies of what you offer.
2. Heading, Synonyms & Questions
When writing the content for each of your pages, consider using a variation of language to describe exactly what it is you offer. If your service can be described in multiple ways, ensure that you include the variations to help capture a range of searches from your users.
Aim to use headings that answer questions a customer might be considering – why do businesses need bookkeeping? How much does Bookkeeping cost? How does the process work? Why outsource your bookkeeping?
It’s worth taking some time to consider some of the questions you get asked daily, and then be sure to answer these within your content. Both your customers and the search engine will love this.
3. UGC – User Generated Content
As the digital age continues to expand and more businesses take advantage of online marketing, differentiating yourself from the competition is becoming increasingly difficult. One way to do this effectively is to improve your social proof by including reviews from your existing customers. This will help to convince potential customers that you are trustworthy and do as you say you will.
An excellent way to help your search engine position is to include user generated content i.e. reviews that are specific to your products and services on the pages you are optimising for those terms. This means you’ll naturally include key terms and real life language into your content, directly from your customers. Amazon & TripAdvisor are the King & Queen of this approach and it’s a direct factor to why they rank so well for so many terms.
4. Geographic Content
If your business operates from various offices and you wish to rank in multiple locations, you will need to bring this information onto your website so that the search engines can understand this and rank you accordingly.
For each location, ensure you have a Google My Business. This will provide valuable information to Google and your users, including increased visibility, directions to your offices and improved website authority.
Second to this, ensure that you include location specific information on each of your area or office pages. Fundamental content includes things like addresses, phone numbers and key page signals (page titles, headings). Secondary content could be information around the office manager, an embedded map, user generated content specific to your location and anything else that is individual to that branch or office.
5. Related Content (Guides, Blog Posts, Further Reading)
Finally, think about creating supporting content that is related to your products and services and include this on each of your landing pages. This will encourage your users to read further and spend more time on your website, in turn building additional value.
Google potentially considers key metrics about your site’s performance such as dwell time, the number of pages visited on average and the bounce rate, which is the percentage of visitors to your website who leave after viewing only one page. Including related blog posts, guides or FAQ’s is a great way to keep users and search engines engaged with your landing pages.
Creating more targeted content can also be a great way of capturing long-tail search terms which users are searching for. This can drive traffic, reinforce your key landing page(internal linking) and increase the content depth of your website.
