What the heck is SEO and why am I not ranking high on google?

I know this is a sticky topic for many of you, and you are all screaming ‘I want to be on the very first page of google’.

But here is your ‘Reality Check’. If you do not have your SEO set correctly and you are not maintaining your website with fresh content every month or so, this is very unlikely to happen.

WHAT IS SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation, the process of making your site better for search engines.

There is quite a lot to go through with SEO, but on this blog I am just going to cover some of the basics.

Here are a few vitals to get your small business ranking:

Keywords – You can easily grab some free keywords from google keyword planner. You then want to try and incorporate as many as you can into your websites written content. Without sounding like a robot of course. Ideally you need a minimum of 500 words per page.

·Meta Titles – Here is your chance to grab attention but remember the most important things to include are a niche keyword and most importantly your location so google can see who you are and where you are. And no this doesn’t mean UK…You need to have your town or city location. Don’t over crowd the Meta Title though.

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Meta Description – Keep this short and sweet, ideally under 160 characters. Capture a short snippet of from the homepage, to grab attention, but at same time tell people what you do. Again, incorporate keywords, and location.

Heading Tag Structure – What is this? So ideally per page you need to have a heading structure for your written content. Your H1 being the most important as this tells google what the page is about. It must be short and ideally include a keyword. Further down the page you can set H2, H3 and so on, which can be short snippets which include keywords and locations. Think of it like viewing a newspaper and you have your headline.

Localised SEO – As a small business website trying to target the big wide world or the entire UK, you will find yourself getting very lost. Especially if you are for example a dog walker, and your just putting ‘dog walker’ as a keyword. Google will filter websites a. within that searchers location first, and any websites relating to dogs and walking. We suggest starting small, and use your local locations first, so google can find you easier.

Remember that google owes you nothing, so you cant expect it to filter your website automatically and bring you business. You need to put in the time and effort to provide google with what it needs, and this all can be achieved without paying for ads.

Here at KH Web Design, myself and SEO Partner, Michael, from WIX SEO are here to support you and together we can get your small business ranking.