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SEO: An essential for business growth

Fay Roe

In times gone by a business’s website was considered simply as a digital brochure to showcase the services or goods that were offered. However, as technology has advanced and innovated, how we use the internet both personally and professionally has evolved. By harnessing the power of your business’ digital presence, your website can become the most valuable tool you have to drive business growth but also to sustain your market position through online marketing.

Behind every successful business is a bespoke and comprehensive search engine optimisation (SEO) and digital marketing strategy. It is crucial that your business has a strategy in place to exploit the available technology and metrics for your advantage.

What is SEO and how it works

Search engine optimisation is a loose term that can be applied to any activity that improves the quantity and quality of organic (i.e. not paid for) traffic to your website. Whereas traditional marketing methods push the product to the consumers, SEO pulls the consumers to your business. It combines multi-tiered tactics that signpost and lead the searcher to your website, enabling it to gain a higher-ranking position in the search engine results pages (SERPs) which increases visibility, business exposure and market dominance.

Researched SEO Keywords

SEO keywords are the lynch pin of organic search and drive internet traffic to a website – using the words and phrases searchers are actively using. Keywords are used across an optimised website design (webpage addresses, image and filenames, and content etc) to give Google subject clarity so it can present the most relevant sites to searchers in the SERP.

It is important your choice of targeted keywords is the most effective selection for your business and industry. There’s a fine line between targeting popular industry keywords and getting lost in amongst the competition. This is why it pays dividends to hire an SEO agency to finely tune your SEO and blog writing digital marketing activities – a metric led tweak can help you reap rewards.

SEO content: Content is king, but SEO extends the kingdom.

The published content must fulfil several important functions. It needs to attract, engage and inform visitors, provide the bots with data to categorise the pages, and meet the demands of the business with strong calls to action to convert visitors into consumers. August 2022 has seen Google start to roll out its ‘helpful content update’ which places more emphasis on the quality of content.

What is the helpful content update?

Google has long encouraged Webmasters to publish content that is:

Relevant to visitors (measured by bounce rate – how long visitors stay on the page)
Quality and bring value to the internet and searcher alike
Unique and authentic (also helps to develop brand reputation)

But now Google is upping its content game with sniper-like precision.

The update automatically identifies content it considers low value or not particularly helpful to searchers and now penalises sites that carry too much deadwood – the focus being on ‘people-first’ content rather than search engine pleasing. The quality of published content directly impacts the success of website SEO. If there is better content on other websites, it will be displayed ahead of yours in the search ranking results.

Man doing a Google search on their laptop

How to create people-first content

· Stick to your own area of expertise

Blog writing for search engines may have taken you away from your niche area. Google wants you to clearly demonstrate authority in your niche from a genuine knowledge base. You may have previously published an article to include a trending keyword purely to attract website visitors, even though it has a tenuous link to your business. The article may be helpful and hold some merit, but if it does not support the rest of your content, it is out of place. For example, an article rejoicing air fryer cookers on an interior design website – helpful yes, but not what the existing target audience would expect.

· Answer searchers’ questions

After reading your content, does the searcher learn something about your niche? Search engine writing tends to say a lot but nothing at the same time. You have the knowledge, so share it. Demonstrate first-hand experience: original images and a video production of work in progress, how-to articles, teach people and help people to accomplish a task.

It's crucial you stay up to date regarding Google core updates and SEO best practices to keep your business website relevant to searchers. Google explicitly states it is going to continually refine the helpful content update to identify unhelpful content. If you are unsure whether your current SEO content meets the threshold, contact Digital Presence for an audit and review.

Note: the helpful content update is sitewide which means all pages have the potential to be affected.

SEO Web design

Your site’s web design is more than creating a digital representation of your brand. Yes, colours and typography are important, and your website needs to be creatively developed to appeal to your target audience, but everything on your website needs to add real value – to your business, for the visitor but also for the search engines’ bots which crawl the pages seeking information to enable them to index and rank the website.

The web design can positively influence the ranking position by being:

Easy to navigate
Responsive for use across different devices and screen sizes
Quick to load
Technically optimised (meta descriptions, title meta tags, site map etc)
Secure

Websites are the digital equivalent of a store front of a bricks and mortar store and are typically the first impression that potential customers have of your business. However, an attractive website design that enhances user experience and meets visitor’s needs is only half of the story; great content and progressive SEO consistently boosts the ranking position of the site through organic search.

Do you need an SEO expert to help you?

An SEO expert is trained to help your business gain more visibility for business growth, and part of this role is to ensure your website complies with changes to Google’s frequent algorithm and core updates. Hiring an SEO professional saves time and ensures your website is an efficient and profitable resource.

Digital Presence can help you with:

Review the website design and structure
Technical advice and guidance
Sitewide keyword research
Expertise in local SEO Christchurch and Canterbury markets
Content creation and management

Whether you are at the start of your business venture, have an underperforming website or are looking for a Christchurch SEO agency to give your business the competitive edge, get in touch for a no-obligation chat. Click here or call 0274 278047.This is why it pays dividends to hire an SEO agency to finely tune your SEO and blog writing digital marketing activities – a metric led tweak can help you reap rewards.

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