How to get your website found

Most of us know that keywords are important.  Some of us know that search engine optimisation is how to improve our website’s visibility – but that’s expensive/time consuming/complicated, isn’t it?

If you engage a specialist SEO company, yes, there is a cost and the only way to work out if the cost is worth it, is to measure the increase in enquiries and sales coming from your website.

Yes, the all-singing, all-dancing SEO strategies can be very time consuming, if you are trying to replicate what a specialist will do.  And, yes, they can be very complicated.

But there’s a quick and easy way to ensure your website shows up in the right searches.

Here’s the strategy

Whether you’re planning a new website or revamping your existing one the first job is to look at each page separately and decide what people would be searching for in order for them to find that page useful.

The shortcut:  answerthepublic.com

This website lets you put your key word or phrase in and then generates all the questions that people typically type into browsers in relation to those.  

With a free account there is a limit to how many searches you can do each day, but you’ll get a ton of useful information.  There will be repeats and different ways to say the same thing, but it’s mostly useful.

Another useful resource: Keywords Everywhere

This is a Chrome plug in and for about $10 you can get tens of thousands of results, so it’s low cost.  You put your search term into the search box in Chrome and along with what Google delivers, you’ll see a box on the right with other terms that people search on.

All you need to do is to identify a list of around 5-10 phrases for each of your pages and then ensure that they are mentioned on that page once or twice in the main body copy.  

If possible, integrate the highest ranking phrase into the page headline and also in the page title.

When you add images to the page add the key phrase or word to the meta tag for that image too and into the image title.

Is that it?

That’s very basic SEO, and will, at least ensure each page of your website is focused on what that page is about.  If you really want to generate a lot of traffic you will need to think seriously about engaging SEO experts.

Every detail counts

When you’re making a presentation accuracy is essential.  Every typo, error or blurry image makes a statement about you and your company.  Worse still, there is a subliminal message ‘this company doesn’t pay attention to the details’; not the message you want a potential client to get.

I was recently at an event where there were a number of presentations.  The first one was clear, highly visual and made points effectively, but the second speaker stood up and kicked off by apologising that the presentation had not been created specifically for this event and he would skip over irrelevant slides.  So, he had set the audience’s expectations very low and the message was ‘this presentation wasn’t important enough for me to create a bespoke presentation’.

As the slides progressed there was a note at the foot of each slide that said [add title].  Clearly someone had not edited the Master slides to remove this.

The next presenter used slides quite text heavy, so more chance of the audience reading the slides instead of listening to her.  There were a couple of spelling errors and an incorrect statement (the slide creator had left ‘not’ out of a sentence, so reversing the meaning).

Yes, I’m a pedant – but when it comes to things that divert attention from the core message, I make no apologies.

Presenting your company to a new client can be as simple as a face-to-face chat with one person or a presentation to a whole team.  If you use a slide deck to help to get your message across, there are a few things that you need to take into account.

• Check and double check for spelling, grammar and punctuation (should it be ‘its’ or ‘it’s’, discreet or discrete, your or you’re?).
• Pare down the text – it’s a visual aid, not a verbal one.  Yes, you should include charts and stats, but let the images tell the story, with you as the narrator.
• Avoid whizzy graphics.  Text that cartwheels is annoying and distracting.  Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should.
• Ensure your brand is consistent throughout the presentation, the correct colours, fonts and logo.

Remember that your presentation is for your audience, whether one person or hundreds, not for you!

Is outsourcing a good solution?

 

As an external agency, we offer an outsourced solution to our clients, but is it the right answer for all businesses?

These are the big questions that business owners and marketing managers need answered.

Will the content you generate be congruent with our values and beliefs?

A good agency will work with you to understand all these aspects of your business and this will run through all the content generated on your behalf, whether that’s a social media post or an article for a magazine or journal.

How will you maintain our branding and image?

One of the first things we ask is ‘do you have brand guidelines?’  If you don’t have this document for your business yet, you can give us the colour references for your brand, the fonts you want used (although in the text areas of social media, you get whatever the platform provides) and the way you want your logo to appear.

If we have something that needs posting quickly how fast can you take action?

Definitely within 24 hours, but usually within an hour or two.  We have a WhatsApp chat for each client that all our team have access to and this is monitored most of the time and anything urgent can be popped into that for fast response.

Who decides what to post or write?

This is a collaborative process, usually the result of a chat about your current focus and social media posts are created for you to review, while other written material such as blogs, articles, opinions, newsletters, etc. are the result of discussion – and, as we get to know you, we’ll suggest ideas if you run dry.

How much time will we need to give each month?

You will need to talk to us for 30-45 minutes each month, usually a regular monthly slot by phone or Zoom.  You’ll also need to review material we’ve created to sign it off before it’s made public. 

Couldn’t we use AI to generate our content?

You could, but you’ll need someone to work with it to programme all the information in, so at least a part-time member of staff.  Material generated by AI needs to be checked as it isn’t reliably accurate.

We have a lot of events that we want to feature in our social media and in blog posts.  How do you ensure that material about these is posted promptly?

There are two options – either we can provide templates for you to post this kind of material on social media yourself live from the event, or if you put all the photographs and video into a shared folder we can work with that material to create posts the same day or the following morning if it’s an evening event.

What are the alternatives to outsourcing?

You could:

• Train one of your existing team to create and post social media.
• Employ a commercial copywriter to be a permanent full or part-time member of your team.
• Get an apprentice and train them to be your marketing assistant, but they will need to learn marketing and copywriting skills.

Having someone in-house has advantages in that they are on the ground and can capture instant information, but long-term these options will probably cost you more than a monthly retainer for an outsourced agency.