Search engine optimisation or ‘SEO’ as most of us know it as is big business. You simply can’t afford to ignore it.  Even in these challenging times, your online presence is critical.   It is worth spending 30 minutes or so a week to do this.

A Forrester study revealed 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine.  Research from HubSpot shows 75% of users never crawl past the first page of search results And everyone wants to know, how do you get to the top spot without a big budget.  Well, it is possible ensuring you've done the basics and then with a bit hard work and persistence, you could get there.

So how do you do that? 

Website optimisation

There is no point wasting valuable resources on SEO if your website isn’t optimised. Before you start, you'll need to identify your keywords. By this, I mean the common words and phrases your customers are searching for. If you are not sure, ask some friendly customers what they would search for and you can also use online tools to help.  I like BuzzSumo.

Once you know your keywords, ensure they appear in the copy on your website and your headers.   Now you need to apply these keywords to the behind the scenes HTML.  This includes the page titles and meta descriptions.  You can normally find this information in your SEO plugin. 

You'll also need to ensure you have a user-friendly mobile version of your site and pay particular attention to the load speed on both a desktop and mobile as this impacts on your search rankings.  You can check this and can run a full site audit for free on UberSuggest.  It identifies all the areas on your site that can be improved to enhance your SEO.

Register with Google My Business

It is paramount you register your business with Google My Business. This is free to do and will help you be found online.  It takes minutes to do and you can always update your profile at a later date if you want to amend any of the details.

A Google My Business listing adds credibility to your business, particularly if you have customer reviews. Ask customers to complete a review on Google for you and populate your profile with your:-

• telephone number

•  logo

• images

• opening hours

• products

Once you’ve done this you can start posting blogs on Google using its post functionality.  Try to do this at least once a week.

Google Search Console

Upload your site map to the Google Search Console.  This is the XML sitemap that lists all the pages on your website.  This tells Google and other search engines about the organisation of your site content. Search engine web crawlers like Googlebot then pick up this file to more intelligently crawl your site, aiding your SEO.

Leverage directory listings

You don’t need to pay for this. There are plenty of free sites you can get your business listed with. The more entries you have, the greater chance you have of being found.  

Free listings include Bing, Yell, Yelp, Thomson Local, Scoot, Free Index, Hot Frog, La Cartes, 192, 118118, Cyclex, Locanto, Approved Business, UK Small Business Directory, Opening Times, Yalwa, Brown Book, Local Data Search, Business Magnet, Opendi and The Trade Finder. Set aside half a day to do it. Once it is done, you'll have that listing for a very long time.

Regular blogging

The best advice I can give to anyone is to blog regularly – at least twice a month, if not weekly. Google loves fresh content and a blog on your website helps to drive traffic to your website. You can also use this content for your social media.

A blog is a big commitment. You shouldn't just dive into it without thinking through your content plan for the year and considering the type of content that your customers would find useful. Thankfully there are lots of free tools to help. I like answerthepublic.com.

Look, learn and watch

You can make a big impact by following these simple steps. It may feel a bit daunting, but you will feel a huge sense of accomplishment once you start. 

What’s more SEO is results-focused.  I like to monitor my progress every day and see where I appear with my keywords on Google.  I use the free version of SEO Edge for this.

About the author

Nat Sharp, is an experienced marketing consultant and the Founder of Sharp Thinking Marketing.