- 4. Do your headings and subheadings and alt tags.
- 5. Make sure your content is up over 500 words.
- 6. Make sure that you do your Google Places listing.
Podcast Transcription
SEO FOR SMALL BUSINESSES – PART 2
You’re listening to the Clickable Marketing Podcast, where we help fired-up small business owners turn clicks into clients. Join us to discover how you can make more money online in less time. Now, here’s your host, Mr. Web Marketing, Brad Hauck.
Hi, I’m Brad Hauck, Mr. Web Marketing, and this is the Clickable Marketing Podcast Episode 9. In this episode, we’re going to have a look SEO for small business focusing on the local market part 2.
Welcome, wherever you are in the world today. It’s great to catch up. I hope you’re having a great week and that your business is going really, really fast.
If you enjoy this podcast, please take the time to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Remember, you can always find me on Facebook.com/mrwebmarketing or MrWebMarketing on Twitter if you want to have a chat, catch up, or have any questions you’ve got.
This is part 2 of 3 on SEO for small businesses. As it follows on for the previous episode, we’re looking at what works in SEO for small businesses, even today, to get extra business and traffic. Even this week, I’ve used these principles to make a difference on at least a couple of websites.
It’s very straight forward, and it’s something that you can follow.
ON THE PERSONAL SIDE…
Personally, over the last week or so, I’ve been quite busy just doing family stuff, keeping up with the kids, and generally enjoying the nice, fine weather. Spring has finally hit here. In fact, it was almost like summer there some days. It’s great to finally get some fine, dry, warm weather. We took the opportunity to have a birthday party for my little girl, so that was pretty cool.
ON THE BUSINESS SIDE…
I’m building websites as well as other stuff for some of my clients and working with Thrive Themes when I’m building. They are fantastic themes. I mention them all the time, of course, but the new landing pages that they’ve added, incredible. They got over 100 different landing pages that you can use, and they’re all editable.
If you’re looking for a WordPress theme that works just like any other but is clean and fast and allows you full editing rights and gives you all the power that you’d get with lead pages, then you should seriously have a look at Thrive Themes.
ONTO THE EPISODE… SMALL BUSINESS SEO FOR LOCAL RESULTS – PART 2
To review last week’s episode, Episode 8, we looked at number one, two, and three things that we should do when we’re optimizing a website to get more traffic from the search engines through an organic process.
Number 1, just to review, was to put tracking in place. There’s no point in doing all these work if you can’t see whether it’s working – using Webmaster Tools and Analytics or any other editing program that tracks data that you can get your hands on. I prefer them, because they’re free.
Number 2. Make sure you do all the titles on your page, that they’re all individual, that they contain your keywords and are focused on your local area, using you suburbs, towns, city, etc.
Number 3 is making sure that the meta description tag is completed, because that information also shows up when someone searches through Google. Remember, that’s the area where you can make it a little bit more human-like and appeal to the human buyer who’s going to click on that listing.
As I said, this is number 2 of 3 podcasts.
Now, we’re going to have a bit of a look at what I consider to be the next three things that you need to be doing to optimize your website to get the best results online.
NEXT 3 THINGS TO DO TO IMPROVE YOUR LOCAL SEO
4: CHECK YOUR HEADINGS AND SUBHEADINGS
The fourth thing is to look at your headings, your subheadings, and your alt tags. It honestly sounds very old-fashioned when people say, “Oh, well, you got to look at the headings and make the keyword’s in there, and look at the alt tags.” The fact of the matter is it’s actually still very important no matter what anyone tells you. It might not be weighted as highly as it once was, but it definitely makes a difference when you’re competing in a local market.
HEADINGS
One of the things you need to do first of all is to have a look at your homepage (so load up your homepage), and then switch to “view source.” You want to have a look at the source code. The reason for that is I’ve often found web designers these days will have three or four H1 headings.
Now, headings on a page in HTML coding have H1, H2, H3, and obviously, the higher the number, the lower the strength of the heading. H1 is the major heading in the page. There shouldn’t be four or five H1 headings. There should be one. There should be one H1 heading, and the rest should be H2’s and H3’s as you work your way down in the least importance. The title, the headline, the name of the article, whatever should be a H1 heading.
When you have a look at the source code, you can use the find command in your browser, which is normally Ctrl+F or Apple+F if you use an Apple keyboard, and type in “H1.” It will actually highlight all the H1 headings in the page. There should only be two H1 tags, one in the front of the title and one with the slash in front of it at the back of the title, and that is it.
Check your H1. I’m sorry, not your title, the heading. Check your headings and make sure that you don’t have multiple H1’s. If you do, you need to seriously think about downgrading the others to an H2.
This is definitely something that comes up when you run any software through. I don’t use software anymore to look at the SEO value of a website. But if you do, and the first thing they’ll throw up, if you’ve got more than one H1 heading, they’ll throw it up at you.
HAVE YOUR KEYWORD IN THE HEADING
You use the H1 code for your major heading. If you can, in the wording of that heading, you should have the keyword for that page. If that page is about security alarms, then it should be “security alarms” or “installing sercurity alarms in your presence” or whatever it is. You need to use your major keyword in there if you possibly can.
This just comes back to that thinking where the search engines look at the title. They look at the description. They then look at the page content. In that content, they look at the H1 headings. They compare all those things to decide how accurate your page is in relation to what you’re saying it’s about.
Once you’ve done that, make sure that the heading still looks human. Remember, this is on your page where people visit. It can’t be stilted or kind of looks like it’s just all about the keywords. Remember that it has to be human-proof.
One of the easy ways if you need to do an H1 heading and you can’t think of anything other than “welcome” is to use a question. A question is like a headline, and you can say, “Are you looking for… this, this, this, etc.?” and go on to the rest of the page. If someone scrolls under your page, they will see that heading, and they will go, “Oh yeah, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.” It just catches someone’s attention.
Sure you can go all the way down the headline’s angle, but a lot of small businesses don’t like that style of marketing. They do find a little bit confronting, so they’d rather keep it very simple.
SUBHEADINGS
As you work your way down the page, divide up the content using subheadings. Subheadings basically make life easier. When you scan a page, you can look down, and you can see the different subsections of the content. So if you’re looking for a particular topic, you can scroll down quickly and see, “Ah, that’s down in paragraph five or paragraph ten or whatever.” If you’re going to have a long page of text, make sure you do break it up with subheadings. It does make it easier for humans to read.
In line with that, make sure that your paragraphs are no more than four or five lines in length. Because paragraphs that are longer than that on the web are quite difficult for a human to read. Keep them small, no more than three paragraphs to a section and a picture or two or whatever you need to do.
Make sure that you go through and do this for each page. Check each page. Check if there’s only one H1 heading. Make sure you put you subheadings in where necessary, if the page is long enough. Make sure that you break your paragraphs down so that they’re readable and easy to understand.
ALT TAGS
Step four was do your headings, subheadings, and alt tags.
Now, the alt tag is the name of the image. When you upload an image, it has a name, and then we have an alt tag. Originally, this was for people with reading difficulties where they can’t see or can’t read clearly. The accessibility software could actually read the picture to them and tell them what it was about.
Google still looks at this as an indicator of what the image is about, so make sure that when you work your way through and you add a new image that you fill in the alt tags. Often, while you’re there, fill in the title tag of the picture as well.
It’s not a major consideration. If you’ve got thousands of photos and you haven’t done this, don’t bust yourself by going back and doing it all again. As you put an image in, makes sure you do it from now on. If you’ve got time, you work your way back through the major images on your site – certainly, like the header that’s on every page, the picture that’s across the top or the slider, Make sure those images are done, because they’re going to be on every single page.
5: LOOK AT THE CONTENT
Step number five, the content. You need to keep the amount of words on your page up a bit. It used to be that you can put 20 or 30 words and lots of pictures, and everything will be cool. But if you really want to get good rankings, certainly, this really applies to subpages, not so much the homepage but the pages about your products that you sell and your services that you do. You need to make sure you keep it up over 300 to 500 words. I would say 500 words is best.
HOW TO WRITE 300 TO 500-WORD CONTENT
This can be quite difficult for some people because they’re not writers. If you’re not a writer, maybe you should just hire one to write the content for you. You can find some through oDesk or Elance or Upwork as it’s now called. Alternatively, the way I suggest to do it, and it’s pretty simple, is you have your headline, and then write three bullet points about that title.
If it was security systems, you might have “wireless, wired, and internet connected” or something. Then underneath each one of those, write another three or four bullet points about each one of those, and then write a paragraph for each one of those bullet points. By the time you do that, you’ll find you’re well up over the 300 to 500 word range.
It’s just an easy way to write. Take your main topic, write three major bullet points that you want to cover, and then write three points about each one of those. Each paragraph works out to roughly 100 words by the time you write it well, and you’ll find you get your content pretty easily.
SEO LOVES TEXT
Search engines still want text. No matter what they say, no matter what you think, in the end they love text. So good text works best. You can get all creative, but I’ve seen sites that are as ugly as sin, and they are only just text and one or two photos on a white background. I mean they really aren’t pretty, but rank the heck out of everyone else – especially in the local market. If you’re competing in your local area, you’ll often see really ugly simple sites working very, very well; and yet you have paid a fortune to make it all look fancy. When it comes down to it, it’s really simple. They’re not overdoing it. They just got lots of good content in the text form there.
WRITE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE
When you’re writing your content, make sure you write for your audience. If your audience is teenage boys, then write to teenage boys. Don’t try to appeal to men over 50. If your audience is a female audience mainly, then write to that audience.
A good example of that might be a plumber. It’s natural to assume that a man would call a plumber when there’s a problem. If you’re an emergency plumber, often it is female callers who call emergency plumbers – or any plumber quite frankly. How do I know that? Because I’ve worked with a plumber and they’ve told me straight up. A lot of the time, the calls they get are from women. So when they write their content, they write it for a female audience. They make sure that it appeals (appeals is probably not the right word), but that it targets that audience.
Think about your audience. Think about who buys from you and write to them. Don’t just write to everybody. In the end, it doesn’t work. You need to target it a bit more.
I would suggest that you write like you talk if you’re selling the product. Often when someone writes something down, they cut out words, and they make it very structured, and it’s very difficult words. Whereas if you write in a conversational tone, it tends to come out much more readable, and it seems more human-like.
One of my favourite sayings is, “Your website’s the laziest member of staff.” I always consider a website a member of staff. That means that when someone comes to your website, that staff member is selling; so when they’re reading, they’re selling. Make sure that your content talks like you’re selling. Make sure you got a call to action. Make sure that you use good pictures and that you use actual facts, good facts, important facts.
Remember, in the end, it comes down to the fact that Google likes content, and they love text content.
Step five is to get your content up to over 500 words on your page. As I said, that’s not always going to work for the homepage; but for your subpages, that’s a very doable thing. One of the easiest ways to do it if you don’t like writing at all is just to talk it out and get someone to type it up.
6: GET AND FILL IN A GOOGLE PLACES LISTING
That brings us to step six.
Now, step six I have done a complete podcast on before, so you can have a look back through the back catalogue. Step six is to get a Google Places listing.
This might sound weird, because we’re talking about SEO about your website. But a Google Places listing is one of the most powerful SEO tools that you can have. Why? Because Google makes it show up above most organic listings. If you do this right and you use the same techniques as I’ve taught in steps one to five, then you’re Google Places listing will come up nicely on the map, and it’ll bring you a lot more traffic.
Make sure that you login to Google Places for Business which is kind of part of Google+. It does move around a bit. Make sure that you claim your listing form the map and fill it out fully. Fill out every blank space. Put hours in all that sort of thing.
If you don’t have people come to your actual place of business, that’s fine. You can say that you service an area of 400 kilometres or 500 kilometres or whatever it is. Don’t get carried away. If your town is what you service, don’t say you do the 500 kilometres around your town. That’s just ridiculous. Target your area. The more tightly you target, the better results you’re going to get.
Make sure that you add your videos and photos, because there is an area there for that sort of thing. You’ll find the photo section is now broken down into interior shots, exterior shots, product shots, etc. Make sure go and take some photos, all you got to do is pick up your camera phone, walk outside, stand still, and take some nice photos. It really doesn’t a great deal of effort these days to get good, clear photos. If you need to edit them, as I previously said, use Pixlr.com and use the easy version, the express version.
It’s essential that you do this. Take the time fill out this Google Places listing. Once you’ve done that, make sure that you verify it. If you previously verified it and you’re changing your phone number, they’ll just ring you and give you a code, and you just make the changes. If you haven’t, you got to have to wait for a postcard or maybe a phone call, depending on which Google chooses at the time and where you’re situated. It changes in different places around the world. It’s going to take a couple of weeks. That means—and this is very important—that you have to put your real physical address, even if it’s your home office.
Remember, you don’t have to show that people come to your house. It won’t show your address, but it will show that you service a certain area. You still need to get that postcard. Without that verification code, you will not show up. If it doesn’t come the first time, keep going ‘til you get it. Go back and request it again and request it again until you get that postcard.
I cannot stress, for the local SEO, there is nothing more important than a Google Places listing. The other part is it also links to your website, so it works in your favour in more ways than one.
IN SUMMARY…
Let’s review what we’ve covered today.
Steps one, two, and three we did last week; steps four, five, and six today.
4. Do your headings and subheadings and alt tags. Go through it, and make sure you only have one H1 heading and that your content is broken down neatly and it’s easy to scan.
5. Make sure your content is up over 500 words. Get it up there. Build those pages. You might not be able to do them all at once, but just work through one page at a time –most important page first, the one that gets most traffic.
6. Make sure that you do your Google Places listing. Get that done, get it verified, get the postcard, and get it live on the web, because you’ll thank me when you have one of those that works well for you. It is just a continuous source of free organic local traffic.
Well, that’s it for this episode. It’s a relatively short one obviously, but I just wanted to keep moving through these.
I’ve got three more things for you in the next podcast episode, so that will be episode 10, I believe, and we’ll go through those, and that’ll finish this series of three.
If you enjoy the podcast, please head over to iTunes and Stitcher and subscribe, but please take the time to leave a rating. Remember, a rating helps me help more people. It’s not just about making me look better. It means more people will see the podcast, and I can help more small business owners just like you.
Remember, you can find me and chat with me on Facebook.com/mrwebmarketing or on Twitter. I’m always around. Send me a message. Only too happy to answer your questions or even just to meet with you virtually.
I hope you’ve had a great time today. I hope you’ve got something that you can apply. Go out. Get these things done, and start to reap the benefit from it.
I’m Brad Hauck, Mr. Web Marketing. This has been the Clickable Marketing Podcast Episode 9. I’ll see you in the next episode.