Search Engine Optimisation
Freelance Website Services from Paul Chester
Independent, Impartial, Bespoke Solutions
SEO is a buzzword that’s seen a lot across the web
but it might not be as complicated as you think!
Basic SEO is just the best practice rules you need to run a website these days
“If you build it, they will come” (or not!)
Kevin Costner has a lot to answer for! If you spent your formative years growing up in the 1980’s as I did, you’ll probably be familiar with the film “Field of Dreams” where the phrase “If you build it, they will come” inspires total self-belief; and it worked for him so why shouldn’t you blindly have the same self-belief that if you build your website, the visitors will come! Um, well, we don’t live in movieland, your website is your business, blind hope won’t get you anywhere – you need marketing!
And, when it comes to SEO, whilst there are some essential basics, you also need to be aware of the bigger picture. To get Google to rank your website above all others, to attract visitors and build a solid reputation, you must understand that Google isn’t a simple baseball pitch, your visitors are not going to flock through your door the second you open your site and there is no way on earth you’re going to just get ‘lucky’ with that in today’s world!
So when considering SEO, It’s a combination of many things; the simple stuff like on-site signals including the code and content is just common sense, making sure your HTML code is geared up to pass the right cues for the search engines so your site is ‘relevant’ to a given search and making your content high quality and engaging is a good start (these are the bread and butter rules) but there are actually a tonne of other things that you should do to ensure you focus on the right things and guide the search engines to better appreciate your site and consider you more relevant than others.
I can help you break down the components of SEO and make them work for your business…
Straight Forward SEO Services from Me to You
- Free consultation & business marketing review. I’ll connect with you to understand your business and online goals.
- Free full site technical SEO audit
- Analysis of your market & competitors
- Comprehensive keyword research. Short, medium and long-term targets
- I can provide Full Service or work with your own resources
- Clear pricing, agreed up front, no hidden costs
- No lengthy contracts
Relevancy, Reputation, Content and Context
SEO is all about trying to get those elusive first-page rankings for the keywords that drive traffic to your site. As I’ve alluded, the basics of SEO are very straightforward but in some cases, it’s not enough and in any decent organic focused campaign, it’s better to get things clear from the outset, understand the goals and identify the path to success.
Crawlability
Making sure your site is indexable by search engines and there are no issues with them being able to read your content
URL Structure
Page URL’s are important to get right. Everything should push the overall context of the content to make it easy to index
Mobile Friendly
Mobile search is a huge market so it makes sense to make sure your website looks good and works fast on mobile devices
Are you Secure?
Google gives more credibility to SSL sites running on HTTPS servers; it’s just one factor to consider but it’s an easy one!
Site Speed
Google loves fast sites! Users love fast sites! Its a no-brainer to consider this as a factor during website optimisation
Meta Tags
Page Titles and Descriptions are usually what appears in the search engines, make the most of this to aid discovery
Duplication
When you’re growing site content, it’s important not to dilute the content through duplication – focus on targets!
Header Tags
Using the correct hierarchy in your content of H1, H2 and H3 tags will help search engines understand the content easier
SEO Research & Market Analysis
Keyword selection
Making sure you pick the right keyword targets then creating a strategy around the topics – this needs some analysis; no point in targeting keywords with no intent these days, or, if you’re a small business, keywords that have a million other websites trying to do the same as you unless you have a never-ending pot of time or money that is!
Where I can Help
In-depth keyword research to identify the targets, competition and effort required. I’ll identify any quick-win’s as well as contextual keywords and potential traffic.
Content
What sort of content do people like? who are the websites currently on page one of Google and why are they there? It won’t be down to luck! The majority of sites that rank well for good keywords in Google are actually there because they have excellent content that engages with their visitors. That needs to be analysed or you could just be wasting your time writing the wrong content. Also, when you write the content, you need to be focused on your selected keywords but, you cannot just stuff them in there!
Where I can Help
I’ll analyse the current market and identify the type of content that search engines & visitors love. I can build out a full content marketing plan from this as part of the strategy.
Context
Sometimes, you need to look at the verticals, build up lots of related content that will focus on surrounding topics and verticals to help consider the wider audience as well as the keywords you’re looking for; Google understands context so you should too. This might include topical news, local topics, questions and answers, explainers, glossaries and going beyond text-based content into Video, Slideshows and more.
Where I can Help
Creating context around a topic can be a lengthy task, so I’m all about cutting to the chase and making this a clear part of the long term strategy.
SEO Site Audits
Making sure your website is geared up for search engines at a code-level is usually a one-time event but it is a critical step in the overall plan.
I’m fastidious about quality and getting the site right from the outset is vital to improving your SEO chances
Crawlability
Making sure your site is indexable by search engines and there are no issues with them being able to read your content
URL Structure
Page URL’s are important to get right. Everything should push the overall context of the content to make it easy to index
Mobile Friendly
Mobile search is a huge market so it makes sense to make sure your website looks good and works fast on mobile devices
Are you Secure?
Google gives more credibility to SSL sites running on HTTPS servers; it’s just one factor to consider but it’s an easy one!
Site Speed
Google loves fast sites! Users love fast sites! Its a no-brainer to consider this as a factor during website optimisation
Meta Tags
Page Titles and Descriptions are usually what appears in the search engines, make the most of this to aid discovery
Duplication
When you’re growing site content, it’s important not to dilute the content through duplication – focus on targets!
Header Tags
Using the correct hierarchy in your content of H1, H2 and H3 tags will help search engines understand the content easier
There are, of course, many other factors to consider when optimising your site but often this just requires a one-off cleanup of the code/template and a knowledge of the simple rules to ensure that whatever you publish is using the best-practice methodology. An audit of your website is the first step in any SEO campaign; understanding any issues that can block search engines or are not giving you the best chance at being discovered should be addressed if you’ve any chance of success.
Off Site SEO Signals
What you do on your website is important but that’s the easy part; when it comes to search engines, the external factors are equally (if not more) important.
Link Building
Links coming into your website from other places on the internet were one of the first external ranking signals for Google and other search engines. Whilst this is now one of many factors, it is still the most effective at telling search engines that your website is worthy of ranking. However, links are not a game! it’s a Quality over Quantity scenario and where the links are coming from are super-important in today’s world. Long abused by cheap and nasty link building campaigns, the likes of Google are far more aware these days of everything and links is no exception.
Link Building Help
Building a natural links profile is something that takes time. Understanding context, quality, volume and the link text is important. I focus entirely on quality link building through a number of different methods.
Local Citation
If you’re a bricks and mortar business wanting to attract footfall to your shop, making sure you’re listed correctly in relevant local directories, Google maps and showing up correctly in Local searches should be a top priority. There are signals here that can influence your positions in Google for localised searches. This is also a great way to help build your brand and reputation, many services offer people the chance to review your business and you can focus in on this.
Local SEO Help
I have an excellent knowledge of local citations and ensuring that search engines can associate your business with a local area.
Social Media Signals
Whilst building links can be a great way to help your rankings in search engines, nowadays, many more factors are taken into consideration and your Social Media Reputation is (arguably) another very important factor to consider. Everything from the number of shares/likes you receive, how active you are and how much you participate are all reckoned to be signals that Google uses to determine your overall authority.
Social Signals Help
I can guide you through using social media effectively to help boost your SEO rankings, Raise brand awareness and attract more customers.
SEO Things to Avoid
There are many Danger Signals that can give your site an imposed penalty in Google so you’ll want to avoid these at all costs!
Have you been hit by a penalty? I can help you get your site back in order
Keyword Stuffing
If you think stuffing your targeted keyword hundreds of times into your page content works, think again, it will get you a penalty
Link Spam
If you want to build thousands of links to your site all linked with your target keyword – forget it, search engines are much cleverer than that
Cloaking
Showing a search engine different content to your human visitors is a big No, No! It’s a deliberate attempt to ‘Game’ the results, expect a penalty
Ads Misbalance
If you put up a page with ads on that’s fine BUT you had better make sure the ads are not the focus of the page. Content comes first – always!
“Thin” content
If Google is about “Quality” then very short pages of content are the opposite of this. Content should be rich and engaging or you risk being downgraded
Missing/Malformed Meta Tags
The focus of your site should be on quality. Make it as simple and clear as possible for search engines to identify your content
Paid Links
You’re treading on very unsafe ground if you buy inbound links; it could get you a penalty or worse still, a complete BAN from Google
Blackhat!
“Gaming” Google using the latest blackhat technique will likely lead to one thing – a penalty, if not now, then almost certainly in the near future
Are you Authoritative? Cos’ That’s the End Game
The end game for any website is to be recognised as an Authority on a topic or topics. This isn’t something you can just say you are, what I’m talking about is when Google decides that your website is the best place to send visitors looking for information. That’s when you get to #1 Organic and can suck up all that juicy traffic. There is only one way to do this properly; BE the authority, write about it, make your content rich and engaging to your visitors, attract natural shares and to this time and time again over a long period of time. Being the best at something doesn’t come easy, nor free, whether you’re spending money on content or putting in the hours yourself, your website is like any business, if you neglect it, you’ll lose. If you’re passionate about it and make sure people know about it, you’ll win.