A beginner guide to explaining how your business can improve its local search engine optimisation

Table of contents:

 

What exactly is local search engine optimisation?

How can we get our business to rank higher in Google’s organic Google Business results?

What are the benefits of SEO to SME businesses?

Most businesses can benefit from SEO if you own a multi-national company or have an independent family business on the high street.

However, the good, the top-notch SEO experts are in high demand, so you have to make sure you’re picking a freelancer or agency that’s giving you the best bang for your buck.

Even if you don’t have a huge marketing budget or are not tech-savvy, do not worry. There are some excellent SEO resources out there. You could start by making some small, gradual changes.

We are two massive fans of the Moz website and Search Engine Land, so do start your quest to learn more about SEO there.

Can you tell us what local SEO is?

Sure, SEO simply stands for search engine optimisation, and it’s the art of getting a business to rise in organic results. It’s also about getting your business to appear in the Google Business results.

If you want to push the boat out, you may want to set it as Adword spend with Google to ensure you get even more clicks.

• Increased Traffic
• Getting more visitors or traffic
• SEO is all about getting more visitors.
• Putting more organic visitors can equate to more sales.

However, hold your horses just for a second. Just because an agency does a sterling job ramping up organic traffic, you have to pause for a second and ask if they are the right visitors.

For example, any company can talk about celebrity gossip and draw in more people interested in reading this, but will those visitors buy something from you?

They may be interested in reading celebrity gossip, not purchasing your product.

 

Right visitors

Therefore, SEO is all about building links and writing content marketing that has an extremely high Google E-EAT score so that you can draw in the right visitors, visitors who are more likely to have “purchase intent,” meaning that they are more likely to buy from you.

It’s all about competitive advantage.

Two businesses could be based on the same industrial site in Cardiff and sell the same products.

However, one business might have hired a top SEO agency like us. Therefore, they would be on the first page of Google and flying high, giving them a massive competitive advantage over their rivals.

Another business that might be geographically no distance at all away from the other business—well, they might have hired the wrong marketing company. Therefore, their sales are not even comparable with those of the other businesses.

Therefore, choosing the right agency is crucial.

Let’s dive straight in and recommend some of our top tips for improving your business’s local search engine optimisation in Cardiff.

Set Up Google Analytics and Google Search Console

Analytics

Set Up Google Analytics and Google Search Console

You have first to set up an analytics account.

Now, you might be thinking, well, that owning these SEO tools will be expensive, right?

The great news is that Google provides some fantastic SEO tools, such as Google Search Console, which are free.

Therefore, any business can set up a Google Analytics or Google Search Console account, and after just a few days, the SEO data will flood in.

You then look at your website’s bounce rate, dwell times, and keyword average positions.

 

What can use Google Search Console for?

Here at our agency, there’s not an hour during the working day that passes without us checking our or our clients’ Google Search Console accounts.

These accounts allow you to submit sitemaps, get keyword information, and examine some of your inbound links.

In our view, it’s crucial to have a Google Search Console account. If you want to improve your business’s search engine optimisation, then it’s crucial that you set this account up.

While Google Analytics is essential for understanding your users and how they interact with your site, Google Search Console is key for understanding how Google views your site and performs in the SERPs.

 

Next, set up your Google Business Profile

This is another free service which Google offers.

As you can see, Google really helps businesses increase their visibility, and many helpful services, such as Google Business, are offered totally for free.

Therefore, you can simply state the geographic area where your business serves its customers and detail the services or products that your business sells.

Whether you’re a dentist or one of the area’s best lawyers, you can get up a Google Business account in under 30 minutes.

You have to cite your business’s NAP; ensure this is consistent with your company website.

However, do keep this in mind: whichever city your business is based, whether it’s Cardiff or perhaps further afield, you will need to know you will be competing with potentially thousands of companies in your city.

Now, Google Business results usually only show three businesses next to the map, so it’s massively competitive. In fact, it’s very competitive to get any business to rank there.

So, for business to appear in the Google Business results, your website will need the following:

 

High Google E-EAT score

Whether your business is trying to improve its organic search engine optimisation or appears more often in Google’s Business results, you should aim to write content marketing that will have a very high Google E-EAT score.

If your website overall has a very high Google E-EEAT score, it shows that your business wants to offer high-quality, first-class information.

If you offer helpful and valuable information on your company website, Google will rank you higher.

 

Make sure to carry out keyword research.

Some business owners will think it’s apparent what keywords to optimise the website for.

However, it’s often not that obvious. To draw in as many shoppers as possible, you often need to optimise the website for hundreds of keywords.

If you do not know what keywords are, they are simply keywords and phrases that shoppers type into Google.

 

Search volume

Be wary of any SEO agency that tells you that you’re now on page one of Google, but the search term is so long that it has no monthly searches.

It’s like saying a car could win a race with an F1 engine fitted.

Some companies like to tell clients that they are basically businesses; we have you on page one of Google for “plumbers who install X brand of boiler and can also service it.”

Great!

But who searches such a question?

Well, nobody!

That’s called a keyword with zero search volume.

As you would expect, keywords with a very high search volume, such as “plumbers + city name,” are much, much harder to rank for. They require you to beat the local competitors, who, too, will most likely be paying for SEO.

 

 

Weigh up the competition.

Some businesses make the massive mistake of thinking that organic search engine optimisation is like Google Adwords.

With Google Adwords, you place a monthly budget, and then you can start appearing on page one of Google in the blink of an eye.

However, the vast majority of Google’s first page is organic results. Now, to appear on the first page, one by one, you need to show Google that you are stronger than the business above you.

Is this easy?

Well, no, but it boils down to your direct competitors’ strength.

If they have a small army of SEO consultants working on-site and trust us, some businesses do well to overtake them; that’s not going to be a walk in the park, that’s for sure.

Then there’s time

How long have they been chipping away on improving their SEO?

One week, one month or for the last 10 years?

If it’s been decades, you have a mammoth job to catch up—a massively colossal task.
So be realistic.

If your direct rivals have spent hundreds of thousands and employ some of the best SEO agencies, it won’t be a walk in the park to overtake these businesses. It will need grit, determination, and an equal amount of staff working on your behalf.

 

Do add schema mark-up

Schema markup is a bit like using a highlighter on an A4 sheet of paper. However, with schema markup, you’re actually marking up key information for Googlebot to index.

If you use Schema markup to mark up that information, for example, you’re making it crystal clear what the NAP information is.

 

Get the on-page SEO right (this is crucial)

You should optimise your titles, H1 through to H6 tags, add internal links, etc., but here’s the crucial thing: This must all be completed in a white-hat way. “Overoptimisation” is a real thing, and avoid it because if you optimise, you will move down Google’s ranks and not up.

 

Titles

A page title can sometimes be called a title tag or meta title.

Page titles can be optimised, and if done in a white-hat way, they can improve the CTR.

 

Meta descriptions

A meta description is simply a few lines of text that you click on to follow the link. It gives you an idea of what the page is about. If it’s well written, you can improve the CTR.

 

Here are our top tips when writing meta descriptions:

 

Meta descriptions should be short.

Your business’s meta descriptions should be kept short and around 140 to 160 characters long.

 

Keywords

Add some keywords to your meta description, yet write the meta description naturally. Don’t, for example, if you sell Hunter Wellington Boots, start to mention that excessively in the meta description, as that won’t be a white hat.

 

Header tags

Add some header tags; these can help structure your business’s content marketing.

So for example, there is H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags.

Now, H1 tags are the most important.

Context

Adding H1 through to H6 header tags lets you tell Googlebot what the page is about.
Without these tags, ranging from H1 through to H6, you couldn’t structure the content marketing. For example, it could be a massive slab of, say, 3000 words.

So, by adding header tags, you are actually helping Google’s algorithm and Googlebot understand what that blog post or page is about.

 

Publish high-quality content marketing regularly.

Have you ever wondered why these businesses often write content marketing, such as blog posts?

Why would a dental practice, for example, give away such detailed advice, write a 2,000-word blog post every month, and so on?

There are several reasons, mainly to improve the organic rankings of that business.

There was an important Google update that basically rewarded businesses that updated their websites with quality content marketing.

If this was added regularly, it could improve the business’s organic search engine optimisation.

There was a critical Google update called the Freshness update.
Businesses that regularly publish high-quality, well-written content marketing with a very high Google E-EAT score can often see their organic SEO improve.

You might read on various SEO agency blogs that they describe content as king.
Content marketing is one of the main drivers for improving a company’s organic ranking.

However, the content must be excellent, and it must show a high Google E-EAT score.

Now, content marketing is not just writing a blog post for, say, 1000 words; no, your content marketing today must satisfy the following

 

•  Must be helpful (Google Helpful Content Update)
• Must have a high Google E-EAT score
• Should have a lot of really good-quality links incoming
• Must also have good on-page SEO.
• Here are some additional ways that you could improve your SEO

 

Pages Google can’t find or crawl

If there are pages that are not currently appearing in Google’s SERPs, but you want them to, you could have an indexation problem.

This would need to be fixed.
For example, could a no-index tab be left on? Ask your SEO agency to fix any indexation issues.

 

Broken links

If there are broken links, they can damage the U.X—that’s the user experience score for that page. Therefore, you do not need to fix any broken links, and perhaps this is because the link URL changed; you can simply fix the internal link if you have, for example, a WordPress website. This can be completed without any web design or coding knowledge.

So, click on your internal links and ensure they all work correctly.

 

Slow site speed

If your website is slow, it needs to be fixed. Perhaps the SEO company would recommend a different hosting company, perhaps one that has its servers closer to your customers; this can improve page speed.

 

Sitemap errors

If you have not created an XML sitemap yet, we encourage you to do so.

 

Duplicate content

Do remove any duplicate content marketing from your website. If you have duplicated content, this could damage your business’s organic search engine optimisation.