Member Article

Hacks to make your website work harder

For those not well-versed in tech jargon, that want to boost their website, & ultimately their business

Sick of hearing phrases like SEO, PPC and key words, and not having a clue what they mean and how you can use them for your own business? This piece by Amber Williamson, digital expert and founder of Digital Willow, will explore just this, offering completely free tactical steps and hacks that will help make your site more visible on Google.

Step 1:

We’ve all heard we need to use the right keywords before, to make our website more searchable. To do this, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your ‘best’ customer. You know the one, the sort of customer that you would like many more of. Consider what sorts of phrases they would type into Google to find your product/service, and these will form those precious keywords. Still not sure of how to come up with them and need some help? Take a look at this brilliant keywords tool that helps you to find out exactly what your audience is looking for – and it is entirely free: http://keywordtool.io/

Step 2:

They say that every picture tells a story. However, in the land of search engines this isn’t quite true. Spiders (the bots that identify web page content and then index it) – can’t actually read images! So, whilst they are beautiful for the design of your page, a quick trick is to include some alternative text, which is the text that sits behind any of your images (you should be able to hover over the image and see a button that refers to ‘alt text’ – click on it to add it in!) When including this text, we’d recommend using one of your keywords with each image. Similarly, video works much the same and is also difficult for the bots to read. We suggest providing a transcript for video and audio content if the words and phrases used would be useful for indexing on search engines.

Step 3:

Register your company on free business directories. These will link to your website, and actually push it up the Google search rankings. There are hundreds of free business directories around the world that allow you to list your business for free, you just need to do your research. We’ve provided you with a few to get your started below:

• Google My Business: https://www.google.co.uk/business/go/?gmbsrc=uk-en_GB-ha-se-z-gmb-s-z-o~sk-66981294743-c&ppsrc=GMBS0&utm_campaign=uk-en_GB-ha-se-z-gmb-s-z-o~sk-66981294743-c&utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=ha&gclid=CjwKEAjwocKtBRCf9d_Q5ovcyHASJAAHhJYOT-TuR7xrRifGOdham22L3MARsSvD0I1Xhs9JKp—yRoC6B3w_wcB
• Glassdoor www.glassdoor.co.uk
• Free Index http://www.freeindex.co.uk/
• Thomson Local http://www.thomsonlocal.com/Addfreelisting
• The Trade Finder http://www.thetradefinder.co.uk/
• Bizify http://www.bizify.co.uk/
• Yext http://www.yext.com/pl/free-business-directory-uk/index.html?kw=free%20business%20directory&ad=73308249065&mt=e&pos=1s2&network=g
• Touch Local http://www.touchlocal.com/
• Business Directory UK http://www.wwwi.co.uk/

Step 4:

Partnership links. Just like you would in the real world, think about who your key partners are and consider how you can create win/win solutions for your website. Google awards ‘quality links’ to and from your site – which will push you up the rankings. Consider how you can create popular links that bring traffic to your site, but also include links that direct traffic to other sites? Do you have a blog where you can link to publishers on a regular basis? Are any of the companies you work with prepared to allow your link on their site? If not, at the very least do your social media pages include links to your site?

Step 5:

Review the content on your website in relation to your keyword list. Ideally, each of your keywords should be written in HTML text as a headline on a page, then again in the body copy. Also, the URL of the page should feature the most relevant keyword. For example, ‘retargeting’ is a topic many digital marketers are asked to assist client’s with. Therefore, any digital marketing agency should not only include it as a keyword, but also on their website, such as within a case study. Take some time to check your page is littered with your keywords and pinpoint the where they aren’t, so you can be sure you’ve got this hack covered.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Amber Williamson .