Humans First, Search Engines Second
In order to creating meaningful, long lasting connections, you need people to connect with. While your website design, content and the product or service you deliver might be great, your website might not be getting the traffic you want or you are not getting the right people visiting the website to connect with.
The Power of SEO
This is where you will need Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and perhaps a company that can help you with this. There are a number of big SEO companies that might service the top end of town but provide poor quality work. The trouble is they use strategies designed to trick search engines like Google to give them more traffic than they deserve. While the numbers may look great to the customer to start with, sooner or later Google catches up with them and they risk being black-listed all together.
SEO is for Long-Term Success
Doing SEO well takes a lot of time and effort. It’s a long term strategy that brings incremental long lasting improvement when it’s done right. But, the numbers can be deceiving. It’s not just about getting lots of traffic. It’s about getting lots of the right kind of traffic for your business. When you get the right kind of eyeballs on your website, you will be able to create a connection with them whether they are ready to buy now or buy later. SEO is all about engagement.
Use the Right Kind of Keywords
Consider what phrases or “keywords” your hot prospects may search for in order to find a business like yours and use them on a page within your website to target that specific keyword. Use the keywords in your headings, page title, meta-tags and meta-keywords. You can also make your keywords bold or Italic throughout your page for a little boost in search engines. Just don’t make it look ugly.
Many make the mistake of writing titles and descriptions for Google’s sake only. You should always write for humans first and search engines second. If what you write makes little sense, even if you make the top of search engine rankings, sooner or later, Google will realise nobody ever clicks on your link and they will downgrade your ranking. Likewise, if you getting clicks but Google find people clicking the back button immediately, they are going to realise your website is of poor quality and will downgrade your rankings as well.
You should also use keywords in your menu where it makes sense to do so. Of course, you don’t want your menu names too long. So again, consider your human visitors more than the search engines.
Use Long-Tail Keywords
Here’s a little tip when selecting keywords. Go for long-tail keywords. These are phrases with 3 or more words in them. Long-tail keywords tend to be more specific. They are usually easier to rank well for and are more likely to be used by a buyer ready to take action.
There are some free tools out there to help you do this. Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool is very good. There is also Wordtracker. Once you have a long list of long-tail keywords, I suggest that you segment them into categories to make it easier to work them into your website content.
