Search Engine Marketing & Optimisation (SEO) Basics For Small BusinessesBy Michelle Henson

Operite Marketing www.operite.com.au

ABOUT§ 22 years in Marketing, MBA

§ 3 Countries

§ Lead Generation

§ Owner of multiple businesses

§ Large range of industries – majority small business from 2-50 employees

§ Operite – what we do

What makes up your Search

Engine Listing?Local-Organic-Paid

GMB/Bing/Directories (Local)

Speed & Responsiveness

Keywords & Meta (Organic)

Adwords (Paid)

Reviews

Structured Data

Links

What is SEO?

§ Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - The process of optimising your website to ‘rank’ higher in search engine results pages, therefore increasing the amount of organic (or free) traffic that your website receives.

TECHNICAL vs Off PAGE vs ON PAGE SEO

§ You can’t have a good ranking in SEO unless your back of house is on order§ The foundations need to look as good as the actual site.§ The search engines don’t see your design only the

structure and content§ If the search engines can’t understand your website is

makes no difference how beautiful it might look

OFF PAGEON PAGE

§ Keywords

§ Content

§ Meta Description

§ Alt Text

§ Title Tag

§ SSL

§ Url Structure

§ Internal Linking

§ Page Performance

§ Backlinks

§ Domain Authority

§ Social Promotion

§ What you can't See§ Redirects§ Code§ Javascript rendering to

digest content§ Canonical URLS§ Mobile Friendly§ XML Sitemaps§ Speed§ Crawl Errors§ Broken Links§ Image optimisation

TECHNICAL

ESSENTIAL SEO TOOLS

Yoast/Rankmath

Measuring your site

Performance

§ No point in marketing if you have low scores

§ Open on Desktop

§ Open on Mobile

§ https://gtmetrix.com/

§ https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

§ https://tools.pingdom.com/

§ https://seositecheckup.com/

§ Use these tools to measure Mobile vs Desktop and identify key issues

LOCAL SEO

§ Google my Business

§ Bing Places for Business

§ Yellow Pages,

§ TrueLocal,

§ White Pages,

§ Hotfrog, AussieWeb, Yelp Australia, StartLocal, SearchFrog and Local.com.au

Other Backlinks

§ To check where your backlinks are currently coming from you can use the Ahrefs backlink checker.

§ Or Moz.com

§ Don’t pay for them!

§ Memberships

§ Sponsorships

§ Suppliers

§ Check your competitors backlinks and get on those sites.

QUALITY SEO BEGINS WITH QUESTIONS

TARGET MARKET –WHAT ARE THEIR

NEEDS WHEN LOOKING AT YOUR

WEBSITE

WHAT DO YOU OFFER THAT

PROVIDES VALUE TO PEOPLE

WHY ARE YOU DIFFERENT

WHO ARE YOU SERVING

WHAT IS THE TARGET MARKETS

PAIN POINTS, WHAT DO THEY STRUGGLE WITH

HOW CAN YOU PROVIDE VALUE TO SOLVE THOSE

ISSUES?

THAT’S THE HEART OF SEO – SOLVING

PEOPLE’S PROBLEMS WHAT

THEY ARE SEARCHING ON GOOGLE /BING

Example - APPLE

– Google doesn’t know your intent yet, The brand, the fruit,

product

Content about the fruit should have texture and taste and colour and

freshness

Google matches the intent with the

semantic nature of your content

That is more important than

blanket keyword density metrics

Google is becoming so smart

They now understand

language and search.

People that understand their business and can write content will succeed at SEO

Keyword Tools

§ Important for;

§ Search Ranking

§ Website

§ Ads

§ Content

§ Getting the right visitors

§ Answer the public

§ Google Keyword Planner

§ kwfinder.com

§ SEMrush

Content Marketing

§ Keyword density is not the thing anymore

§ Google understands synonyms. Each page does not need its own search phrase any more

§ Can look at condensing content now?

§ Don’t dilute your visibility or compete with yourself by having too many posts on the same subject. Combine them. Humans don’t want to hop around and neither do the search engines.

§ Longer form content – 1700 words is useful

§ Look at ranking per page in Console to see what you are ranking for

§ Make the content longer and more useful for people.

Content Calendar

§ Keywords

§ Topics

§ Placements

§ Social Promotion/Linking & Sharing

SEO Descriptions per

page

PPC

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - A method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. One of the most common types of PPC is

Google AdWords.

Adwords

Headline 230 Characters

Headline 130 Characters

Description80 Characters

SitelinksNo guarantee of what will showGoogle chooses

Call outsNo guarantee of what will showGoogle chooses

Text path2 x 15 Characters

Reporting -Google

ANALYTICS§ How is this set-up on your site

§ Google Console

§ Google Tag Manager

§ Adwords tracking

§ Bounce Rate

§ Traffic Sources

§ Entry Page

Google Console

§ Add Sitemaps

§ Receive emails about errors

§ See search terms and volume and CTR

§ Free – Necessary!

§ Connects to Analytics

Where to Begin?

SUBSCRIBE TO A TOOL LIKE SEMRUSH EVEN FOR A MONTH AS IT WILL GIVE YOU A

COMPLETE LIST OF WHAT YOU RANK FOR, WHAT PHRASES AND KEYWORDS, WHO YOUR COMPETITION IS ONLINE, WHAT BACKLINKS

YOU HAVE.

AND WHERE YOU ARE LACKING IN SEARCH TERMS.

AND WHERE YOU HAVE ISSUES IN TECHNICAL SEO – WHAT YOUR WEBSITE IS DOING TO

CAUSE PROBLEMS

My top 5

Put together a plan of what is most important

Work out whether you can do yourself or need help

Local Search!

Site Maps

Meta description on every page

Ranking Higher on Search Engines

§ Every 1% makes a difference

§ Claim your listing on Google & Bing (verify)

§ Page Speed

§ Relevance of content

§ Backlinks – Local Search, Yellow Pages, Clients, Articles, Blogs, Social, Industry Directories

§ Mobile Responsiveness

§ Search Console & Sitemaps

§ Alt Tag images (Yoast seo)

§ Optimise images

§ Meta Tags & Site Descriptions

§ REVIEWS

§ Keywords in text, pages, Meta, images

§ Structured Data – products, opening times, location

And after that?

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE EACH MONTH

§ Always be looking at your data, once you understand what you need to do you can do it yourself

§ Look for what phrases are important to you and improve content to continue to elevate your rank.

§ Also look for new opportunities

§ Review what your target market is looking for and what’s important to them and create content to support it.

HOW CAN YOU TELL IF YOU ARE IMPROVING?

§ Recommend using Analytics to look at trending metrics over time.

§ Annotations in Google Analytics – ap post it note for changes to your website!!

§ See what’s impacting on your search and ranking

FREE Apps to make your life

Easier

§ Google Console

§ Yoast or Rankmath

§ KW finder

§ SEM RUSH

§ Dynomapper for large sites

§ Screaming frog

§ The Moz tool bar for seeing your content at a quick level in the eyes of a search engine

Takeaways

§ SEO is a process, it’s a journey not a final destination, you always have to keep working on it

§ It’s a mix of research, strategy, planning and execution

§ Requires effort on your part – the business owner

§ A true SEO project is a collaboration. No one knows your business like you do

§ You know your target market the best.

§ You need that knowledge to share with the SEO consultant to derive value.

§ Action! Do something day to get your marketing in motion

§ Presentation available at www.operite.com.au/tools

§ Adwords character excel tool

Dodgy SEO’s

§ There are no diet pills

§ Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.

§ No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

§ Do your own analysis & research

§ Factor costs vs time & knowledge.

§ Technical SEO vs Content

§ Check Google Guidelines

§ Adwords help is legit to a point

§ Good to have an understanding of SEO yourself as no one knows your business or industry like you do

Marketing Planning Sessions§ Can be hard to do all on your own

§ SEO

§ OneonOne Consulting

§ Specific Projects

§ Marketing planning workshop withlikeminded business owners§ Identify your target audience personas

§ Build 6 month Marketing Plan

§ Create Content Calendar

§ Set-up social automation

§ Choose the best Social Platforms

§ Adwords written

§ Email me for further information

§ michelle@operite.com.au