Top tips on how to get your business on page one of Google
By Madeleine Jones
Hey everyone. Today’s piece is all about how to shoot your business to page one of Google so you can get the enquiries you deserve.
You want to create. You want to make more money for the life you want to lead. You don’t want to have to think about tech and website stuff. But you do need the knowhow to make a success of your business. The key factor to your success as a businesswoman? Attracting sales. What’s the easiest way to do that? Getting found on Google.
In an age where social media updates can throw us all off, those who rely too heavily on Instagram will get left behind as it’s our websites that we have actual control over. So let’s do something about that.
I’m Maddy Shine, just call me your soon-to-be new favourite SEO expert. SEO being ‘search engine optimisation’ which is a dull name for working out how to get you to page one of search engine results. I’ve been working with creative women since 2012 to support you to grow your businesses and get found online.
There's no doubt about it, you need to be willing to commit time to work on your SEO but with my help, this journey will be a lot easier for you to make. So without further ado, here are my top ten tips on how to get your business found online.
1. Who are you speaking to?
You need to work out exactly who you want to sell to. It's all very well saying "Hipsters in Hackney aged 30-45" but you have to be more specific. Ask yourself questions like:
What are they called?
Where do they live?
What do they spend their money on?
What do they watch on TV?
What films do they love?
How do they spend their free time?
If you're just starting out, or you haven't ever done a target audience profile before, think about who you've loved working with, and what kind of traits they had. Ask your target clients questions when you're speaking with them, and you'll find out more about them and what makes them tick. By giving them a persona, you get to know them really well and you then create content on your website and social media channels to attract more sales.
2. What are you selling?
Let's pretend you're selling handmade lace lingerie. You're not competing against every other lingerie designer in the world, you're more niche than this. It's the same with any business. Understand what you're selling and how it differs from your competitors and this will inform how you communicate this on your website through the text you use, and the kind of images you use, and the useful content you create.
Write down some notes about the market you're in and the details of your niche area. It's so much easier to get found when you work in a niche, because you have less competition and you’re more likely to dominate the search engine results.
3. How do you find the right words to use?
Think about all the words and phrases you use to describe your product/service, then think about the words your clients use to describe what you do. Then use a thesaurus to plug in the words and phrases you've used so far to find out alternative words.
Using our example of the handmade lace lingerie, words like 'handmade' or 'lace' on their own are not going to cut the mustard because they're too broad – you’re not competing with every other handmade product on the planet, nor are you competing with every lace product, which is why phrases are key. So ‘handmade lace lingerie’ or ‘sustainable lingerie’ would all be great to have on the list depending on your business values and goals.
Once you have this list, type into a spreadsheet and then head to Google Keyword Planner. This is a free tool that tells you how many people a month search for these phrases (volume), and how many of your competitors use these phrases to get found online (competition). You're looking for the magical combination of a high volume of searches a month and low competition. This is not impossible, but it does take some time. This is also another key reason why it's important to embrace your niche as it's often lower competition.
4. Remind people you exist and often
Lots of people create a website and think that's it. But you need to remind people you exist regularly. People's attention spans are short (just think of how we all scroll through our phones mindlessly) and you need to stick in people's minds. They need to see your brand on average at least 7 times these days before they make a decision to buy from you. You therefore need to provide reasons why people should be visiting your site regularly and consistently. Publish new work as soon as you create it. You need lots of content on your site to be taken seriously and to get your readers to stick around and keep coming back. Don’t be afraid of re-sharing old content to keep your social media dynamic and informative. It’s all about offering value to your audience.
5. You need to blog consistently
You need to have a blog on your website. Lots of people get scared about putting themselves out there but I promise you this is the easiest way to attract traffic to your site. It's cost effective because you're doing it yourself! How do you know what to write about?
Think of questions your audience have asked you, look up in forums online to see what people are asking about your kind of product or service. Look in Facebook groups to see what people are asking. Research the heck out of it basically and write a blog post per answer.
You need to choose a keyword phrase from your list per blog post and make this the focus. You can feature the phrase once in the title, once in the text and once in the metadescription (the text that appears in search engine results)
6. You need to build links back to your website
You need to get links back to your site in order to attract traffic. Register with Google My Business to get yourself literally on the map (you can hide your address if you work from home), register with sites like yell.com. Look up free business directories in your county and directory sites in your niche and get registered there. Set up a spreadsheet with all your target sites and keep track of your progress, otherwise it gets a bit overwhelming.
7. You need to install Google Analytics
You’ll find it demotivating to continually update your site and publish blog content unless you actually check who’s looking at what. You need to install Google Analytics to understand how people are using your website, what the popular content is and therefore what to create more of. There is literally a ton of information but even the main dashboard provides you with useful information you can apply to making decisions about your site. To install it, there's some code you need to add, but Google are increasingly supportive with their documentation (hint: not written just for geeks) and you can find help to add it to your site.
So there you have it! Phew! You made it. Now that you’ve read through my top ten tips on how to get your business found online, you can put it into action by downloading my target audience profile template here – it’s the foundation to getting found online!
Madeline Jones
I'm Maddy and I’m lucky enough to be known as the SEO Queen by my clients. I run an SEO consultancy called Making Your Business Shine because that’s exactly what I love to do. I help ambitious creative businesses get more sales through SEO (search engine optimisation) or “So Exciting Obviously” as I like to call it. I love to teach in a fun way how to get found online, because SEO does not have to be dry or dull, it can be used as the tool to get you fully booked by your dream target market. Obsessed with the web from an early age (I designed my first website as a teenager before most of my friends had the internet) I went from corporate burnout in London to living on a beach in Goa to now working with hundreds of wonderful women all over the world. Come and join my lively free Facebook community with plenty of free trainings here.
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My website: www.business-shine.co.uk
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Twitter: @maddy_shine
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Photo credit >>> Luisa Starling - http://luisastarling.com