The coronavirus pandemic has changed our shopping and working behaviour, and who knows for how long? Shopping has gone online, and the workplace has gone online. With all networking, events, exhibitions, most printed media, sponsorship and many other traditional marketing channels currently off the table your online presence is more important than ever before. If your brand is going to be found, it’ll be online. This makes having a decent search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy mission critical.
Now, we won’t pretend that SEO is an easy thing to get right – there are many elements best left to the professionals. We can’t promise either that with a few simple tweaks you’ll be able to soar to page one of Google – but what you can achieve is a good improvement and a solid platform from which to build.
5 simple things you can do to improve your SEO from home
1. Update your Google My Business page
Ensure that your Google page is up to date, and fully populated with the correct address details, contact details, opening hours and images. You might even be able to encourage some of your customers to write and submit a positive review.
2. Give your website a spring clean
Use a free online tool to perform an SEO scan. Fix broken links, update your information and consider how you can make way for new and fresh content such as news, blogs and articles. Make sure your site is optimised for mobile because sites that are not mobile-friendly are massively disadvantaged and will almost certainly not be found when performing a Google Search from a mobile device or tablet.
3. Secure your site with SSL
Right back in 2014 Google advised website owners to make their sites more secure by adding a security certificate, (this is indicated by the preview https:). Not only is this beneficial for visitors as it adds an extra layer of protection, sites that do NOT have a SSL certificate in place will not rank well when it comes to being found on Google.
4. Create SEO focussed content
When it comes to SEO, regular content is most certainly king. Consider topics relevant to your audience as well as the keywords potential customers might use in a search. Google loves sites that are up to date and are added to regularly with fresh and relevant content. Conversely, static websites do not fare well.
5. Up your social media game
Link to your social media accounts via your website and be sure to engage regularly, including sharing some useful and relevant articles and content that link back to your website. Consider adding a social media feed to your site – but only if you intend to keep it current.
Following these tips will certainly get you started and provide a platform to begin to improve your SEO. Good SEO, and marketing in general, relies on consistency so please don’t forget to keep up the good work. It is all too easy to slip back to square one!
Rapport Digital offers affordable SEO service for accountants and accounting firms across the UK. Get in touch to find out how an effective SEO strategy could work for you!