We’re Back!! After a well deserved mid-term break we’re back in the class room and ready to go.  This week we look at SEO and what practical tips we can use to improve the traffic to our website.  SEO deals with the factors that make your website more visible to your audience.  It starts with Google and the search engine results page (SERP).  Your goal is to rank high up on a results page when a user enters a search term that relates to your business.   SEO is a wide and complex subject that covers technical coding to easily managed changes you can make to your website.  Over the next two weeks we are going to cover two key areas that are practical, ‘can do’ elements.  This week we’ll look at:

 Keyword Research.

Google presents the most relevant and current pages to a search result so it is important that you know the words that your audience are entering when looking for information about your product or service.  There are five basic steps to carrying out keyword research.

1.   Create a list of words.

Brainstorm all the words your customers would use.  Look at single words and multi-word phrases that they would use when researching and buying products.  Cover all the services your site offers and avoid generic terms.  Look at your competitors’ sites and check what words and phrases they are using.  You should now have a list of at least a hundred words.

2. Refine your list through the Google Keyword Planner Tool.

 

You will need a Google Adwords Account to access this very useful Google tool.  It is easy to set up and you do not need to have an ad campaign running.  The Keyword Planner allows you to upload your list of words, target the area your customers are in – e.g.  Ireland, Leinster, Dublin and gives you a report on the average number of monthly searches for all your terms.  Look at the variations of searches throughout the year.  For example the words ‘fitness’ and ‘diet’ have high volume of searches in January.

3.  Finalise your list

Create a spreadsheet to see each word’s search volume, discard the words that are not relevant to the site and have low volume.  Aim for 10 – 20 keywords for each service.  Your list should have a mix of targeted and broad keywords.  For example a broad term would be ‘boots’ or ‘red boots’.  A targeted term would be ‘Ladies red boots’ or women’s suede red boots’.

4. Plan your on-page content.

With your refined word list, build your words into the content of your website.  Use three or four related keywords per page and make sure they are in the Title Tag, Meta Description Tags, Meta Keywords Tags, Headings, Alt Text and images.  Do this for all new content like blogs, releases and social media posts.

 

 

 

5.Monitor and adjust your Keyword list.

As you post fresh content and measure the traffic/click-through rate you will build a picture of the content that is popular with your audience.  Be sure to monitor your keywords in your analytics report and  adjust your keyword list and content on an ongoing basis.

Next week we will look at Link Building for SEO with practical actions you can take.