I’ve designed my site and my business is ready to go, now what?

If you, like many business owners out there, have just finished developing your brand new site and are proud to call it your own ‘baby’, you are probably reading this post and thinking to yourself, “now what?!”.

Having your website reflect your business and brand is the first step, but now you need to invest in getting customers to find it.

The digital world is full of tricks and trades, products, services and strategies on how to best market your website. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach and when doing research on how you can bring customers to your site – speak to experts in their field who understand the ever-changing ways of Google to get a better insight.

What is SEO and how will this help my website and my business?

We all know that Google is the first place everyone turns to when looking for anything, really. Whether it’s that late night pizza craving you have or the sheer panic of needing a plumber when your toilet won’t work at 10.30pm on a Wednesday night, you know these people have been told to “just Google it!”.

One of the ways to help customers find you online is by engaging in search engine optimisation (SEO). Search engine optimisation allows Google to find your website and rank it for keywords that you are wanting to target and focus on.

So, if someone is searching for that last minute plumber, they would have jumped onto Google and typed something like, ‘emergency plumber St Kilda’ and, voila – a range of local businesses appear.

As such, SEO is extremely important to your online success – especially if you’re a small business just starting out. SEO works to rank your site so that it starts to appear on the first page of Google results. This gives your customers the opportunity to see your site and feel obliged to give you a call. There are a range of important elements involved in having a robust SEO strategy in place to allow your website to rank.

How does SEO work in a nutshell and what does it all involve?

A sound SEO strategy involves taking the time to analyse, research and understand what your website is all about, and how it has been created. You first need to take a look through your site to see what you are working with.

Invest time in a team of experts who will understand your business, what products or services you may offer and how your website has been developed. What you might find is that every website will have a different history in terms of work performed onsite. This may mean that a unique strategy will need to be mapped out to overcome any of these obstacles.

A lot of people compare their sites and results to that of their friends and will often believe that their results should mirrors others. Every website will contain its own backlink profile. A strategy behind the backlink profile and an on-page strategy can be completely different.

When selecting which keywords to target, it’s important to keep in mind who your customers are. Every business is unique and will therefore require various factors to be considered when choosing keywords.

Some businesses, like online stores, will need to focus on keywords that cover their key products.  Other businesses will want to target a certain area or location, while some may even target customers on a national level (e.g. Australia wide).

The keywords that are selected to rank the site should be worked and improved on over time. Google will start to rank your site as it grows in credibility and authority which will come from investing in a strong on-page and off-page strategy.

Unlike other digital strategies, SEO is a long term strategy that yields longer term results. Once you do achieve page one results, maintaining them and further improving on your site’s visibility will come from a robust on-page strategy that tells Google your site is credible.

The off-page strategy, like the link acquisition, will add authority from other relevant site,s while relevant content that you update frequently will engage your customers and show Google your site is your business.