I have seen a few posts and people recently crying to all who will listen of the wonders of SEO and how they can help you do great things, but how legitimate are these claims?
From the outset, let me say – no one can guarantee getting you to the top of google. Sorry to say, but that’s the truth. Google love to change up their algorithm on a regular basis and punish sites that attempt to manipulate ranking algorithms.
Your best bet is, and always has been simply having a great website.
Your website is your shop window, open 24/7, for the entire world (no pressure). It would be difficult to argue that in today’s digitised space, that there is a more important tool for most, if not all business sectors. Your website often not only governs the first impression of your business, but also reinforces any previous communications, recommendations or any other marketing activity you plough your money into.
Remember, it’s all good and well bringing hundreds of people to your shop door – but if the shop is tired, difficult to get around or find what you’re looking for, you’re pouring that SEO money down the drain.
No need for filling a black hole, littering your pages with keywords and adding in cumbersome new ‘landing’ pages with odd language phrasing as some SEO ‘experts’ will have you believe – you need to focus on high quality content that genuinely adds value, and great usability.
Techniques like keyword stuffing, cloaking, or using hidden text can actually be worse than just having a rubbish website, leading to ‘penalties’ as Google fights against the bots for fairness. A website needs E-A-T, also known as Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness – relevant and usable content to attract and retain visitors.
Good User Experience (UX) including load time, interactivity, and visual stability are favoured in search rankings, and even better – they are far more likely to convert a potential customer. Your website must be user-friendly, load quickly, and work well on mobile devices. If these basics aren’t sorted, no amount of SEO mumbo jumbo can help.
So, what should you be investing in? In the first instance – assess your current situation.
We provide SEO reports on websites to see where you are currently sitting and what issues may be lurking in the background. This is a great thing to see exactly where you are and understand what you are working with. We look at the usability of your site from both the front end and back; with a visual, structural and technical audit including accessibility, on page optimisation, meta descriptions, keywords, page speed, backlinks and more.
From this, you will see areas you need to work on for your site to grow organically (and more effectively) for long-term SEO, and we can advise of how you can get there. This is a great thing to do before you think of ploughing money into Google AdWords, etc. It may be a simple case of restructuring, or we may suggest you need a complete overhaul, but we try to provide as many options as we can to give you flexibility.
What is true, is that proper SEO takes time to see results. But ultimately, the only real way to help your site be seen is for it to be as good as it can be from the inside out, genuine and informative with regularly refreshed content.
There is more that needs to be done… According to Google, regularly updating and refining existing content is crucial. This makes total sense, they need to know you are still active and available, otherwise they won’t send people your way. If you care about your business, you better start caring about your website.
The most obvious way to do this, is in the form of news or blog articles and outreach such as newsletters and social media. You may not know that the ‘back-end’ of your website also needs to be regularly updated. The rules around best practice for coding and website build structure evolve and are seen and ranked by our SEO overlords.
The good news is this is something we can help with. We offer web hosting and maintenance (see here for more) but can also put together a custom SEO-plan for you to ensure continued success.
The moral of the story is that before spending any money or time on SEO, you need to invest in your website. It’s as simple as that. By having a quality website, you will always be ahead of the algorithm.
Want to know more? Contact us at Jili Allen Creative.