Have you been looking at your Google Analytics recently and thinking how woeful your site traffic is? Are you asking yourself questions like; “Why are my page views for this week so ridiculously low?”, “What the hell am I doing wrong with my website?” and “Is there such a thing as a simple SEO strategy?”
If this is where you are at, then please know you are not alone. Ahref reported that from their index of worldwide web pages (which is huge by the way), 90.63% get zero traffic from Google, and 5.29% of them get ten visits per month or less. Let us put that in perspective… that is just over 4% of web pages that get minimal to good traction. Mind blown yet?!
“If 90.63% of websites get zero traffic from Google, then you have a MASSIVE opportunity ahead of you. Start learning about SEO today.”
So firstly, you need to breathe a little, because you are not the only one who does not have a well performing site – but if you put a simple SEO strategy in place you could certainly outshine the competition.
Secondly, I think as small business owners we think of SEO as being some whizz of a thing that only web developers understand and that it will cost hundreds, if not thousands to put right on our existing website. The truth is, dear reader, that there are plenty of SEO tasks you can do for yourself at a fraction of the cost if you want to take the time to do this yourself.
What is website SEO? Website search engine optimization is the process of increasing both the quality and quantity of traffic you are actively driving to your site, via the content, keywords and user experience your page/site gives, which includes the value proposition of your content’s aim.
I’m going to share with you the simple SEO strategy that I work on with my clients and here on my own website and it makes a big difference.
What are the components of a basic SEO strategy?
I think there are three areas of focus that we need to work on as website owners that will really make a difference when it comes to SEO, and these are;
A SEO keyword, copy and content strategy
A SEO site user strategy
A SEO marketing strategy for your content
It is more than likely that you are focusing on one, or two aspects from one of these strategies without realising the bigger picture of work that you should undertake, just like I was early on with my previous ecommerce website.
That is ok, read on and let us solve this together.
This process needs to start with your understanding of the basic requirements of Google SEO.
On top of this, I also find it useful to find out how Google Search is now affecting my future SEO optimization and you can read my journey and look at this topic in my article, ‘How do I improve my Google ranking (2020 adventures)‘. Understanding how Google is manipulating search results for its users, gives you a clearer idea of what your simple SEO strategy should be focused towards.
SEO analysis is your final step before you create a plan for each of the optimization points I mentioned before. Look at your Google Analytics to complete your SEO audit and to start to ask yourself, what is my best performing content? How can I improve this? What other website content can I improve to produce the results I wanted?
How to develop a keyword, copy and content strategy
I have put this strategy right at the top of our discussion, because it underpins and informs a lot of what we will be working on later. This is also the under pinning of Google’s requirements for ranking websites on their search engine index.
Let us look at each individual component.
What is a keyword strategy?
A SEO keyword strategy is a plan for how you are going to increase your search engine rankings by using certain words that you want to target and rank for on search engines like Google. These words can either describe what you do, or what you sell, or even what topic you are discussing on your web page, or blog.
There are two types of SEO keywords you need to have in mind when you develop your strategy and these are;
Seed keywords – A seed keyword is a foundation word or two-word phrase that becomes part of a short-tail, or longtail keyword phrase, but in itself never changes. For example, a seed keyword could be a brand name, like ‘Persil’, or it could be a phrase, like ‘yoga class’. Let us use the ‘Persil’ seed keyword in two short-tail keyword settings, so you understand;
‘Persil automatic’
‘Persil washing powder’
Now let us use the ‘yoga class’ seed keyword in two short-tail keyword settings;
‘Yoga class London’
‘Yoga class free’
Your chosen seed keyword is also something with which you want to gain the most visibility on search engines and become linked to.
Longtail keywords – A longtail keyword by comparison is made up of 3-5 words generally and specifically relates to a niche search result. These are more heavily used in content marketing, particularly on website blogs and on landing pages. An example of a long tail keyword might be, ‘Yoga class near Oxford Street’. Longtail keywords are generally used for more specific content, in this case it might be a blog post about your new classes near Oxford Street, or it could be a review of a yoga class near Oxford Street that you attended.
Think for a moment about what you would like your keywords to be. Personally, I would choose no more than 5, or 6 seed keywords and then I would create an initial list of ideas for longtail keywords to work with in my copy.
What is a copy strategy?
A copy strategy for your website is deciding on two things, firstly the voice and the language of your text and this comes from understanding how to speak effectively to your target audience (which can take a bit of time and research). For me that is presenting complicated content marketing topics in laymans terms and providing resources my potential clients can refer to when they have the time to focus on that given area of their strategy.
Think about what this might mean for you and how you create copy for your website.
Secondly, it is the important use of keywords and marketing language in your copy, whether that is scarcity in sales pitches for landing pages, or product pages to highlight a call to action (CTA), or whether it is presenting an expertise piece of content, in a valuable and authoritative way to build brand awareness and consumer trust.
Most of your web pages will be formed from expertise content, especially if you blog for your small business (and I think you should be by the way!)
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy is a plan for the design, creation, delivery and aftercare of web pages and blog posts on your website.
Every time you add a new page, whether it is a stand-alone informational page, a blog post, or a product/service/event page you need to prepare it in advance. Ask yourself why is this important to my website? How will this be useful to my customer? How will I be able to create this page effectively to furfil my keyword and copy strategies?
Blogging is a great way to add fresh content to your website, which is something Google loves to pick up on and can help your ranking in searches. If you have not written a blog before and are not sure what to post, then I already started creating some helpful content for you on this topic and you can find those published below;
What Google wants you to remember
Once you have your keyword, copy and content strategy in place the next piece of the puzzle is your site user strategy and this is probably one of the biggest areas that lets down your site currently, so listen up because I’m going to help you solve that!
How page speed affects your search engine ranking
Page speed is how fast your web page loads and whether it is your home page, product page, terms page, or even a blog article it needs to be quick. In fact, if it takes more than 5 seconds you are in trouble. It is thought that page speeds of 5 seconds are faster than approximately 25% of the web, with 2.9 seconds faster than 50%, 1.7 seconds faster than 75% and 0.8 seconds faster than 94%, according to SEMRush. They further reported that Google themselves stated that just 2 seconds is the threshold of acceptability for ecommerce websites – yikes! So, Google care about how fast our sites are and they are only going to rank those who have better speeds above you, regardless of how much you think your products are better, or even if your prices are cheaper.
How speed of websites rate against each other on the web
This is where I found myself with my ecommerce website when I ran Sara’s Texture Crafts… my page speed was bested by a major competitor who had a worse site, next to nothing in terms of descriptive copy of what they were selling and their prices were usually 10% higher than mine. I came across a page speed tool and tried it. My home page speed was 14/15 seconds if I remember correctly and my competitors was half of that. The page speed tool told me where my site issues were and after spending about a week trying to fix things I matched, or just bettered my competitor. Two weeks later I recorded the highest traffic from Google I had ever received!
The page tool I use is GTmetrix.
The first time you use it your jaw will hit the floor and you will see a lot of red. Take a deep breath and try to understand the tasks you need to perform. After you have completed what you think you needed to do, go back, and reanalyse your site.
Having trouble with your Page speed? Watch this;
How bounce rate affects your search engine ranking
What is a website’s bounce rate? A website’s bounce rate determines the rate at which page visitors click away from your site without taking action, whether that is visiting another page, or making a purchase. It is determined by the number of single sessions divided by all sessions on that page for a specified period of time and is usually expressed as a percentage.
What is an average bounce rate? A bounce rate of less than 40% is deemed usually to be excellent, up to 55% is average and up to 70% is higher than average.
Google's website bounce rate acceptability comparison
Bounce rates are expected to be higher for blog post pages (between 70-80%) and it is thought that this is the nature of blogs, news, and event pages where traffic is given one hit of content about a specific topic. If you imagine searching for a specific food recipe online, like a ‘chocolate gateaux’ you want to make for a birthday party, you are more than likely to want that one piece of information from the site you found in the search results and so after you have copied it down, or bookmarked it you aren’t going to take any more action on that site. Instead you will click away to something else. The same thing happens when we are looking for the latest news on a given topic, or social happening. However, when we are looking for a product, or service to buy, the chances are we will want to see more informational pages than just the product page, for example a shipping page, a returns page, or go through to the cart. Therefore, the bounce rate is expected to be much lower.
What are the causes of users bouncing away? Typically, page speed and content are our biggest problem. Our websites are probably too slow to load and so the user leaves us to look elsewhere, or our page was not what they either thought it would be, or it did not have the information required. Worse still people did not agree with what they read, so they click away.
Think about how you can combat this… the chances are you have already thought of many things you can do from the discussion we have had so far.
Here are some tips to reduce your Bounce Rate;
Why Google wants your website to be easy to navigate, read and understand
Put simply Google want their user to have the best experience online.
If you read my recent blog post on ‘Google featured snippets: what you need to know!’ you will have seen exactly how far Google are going to create the perfect search engine experience for their users and they want you to offer the same when their users land on your site.
If you cannot, then put simply, they will not share your site.
Think about the user experience on your website, how do people land on the site, how easy is it to find what they need? Then ask yourself how easy it is to complete the checkout… all this matters and can affect bounce rates. If you have a high bounce rates on individual pages, then work on fixing them.
Why Google wants to know your authority on your niche subject and what they look for
What is website authority? Website authority is based on how much a site is trusted by its users, other industry experts and search engines. News sites like the BBC, or The Guardian, for example are highly trusted sites at delivering the news and we know this because our peers and industry experts cite them in conversation or share something from them online. We also know this because Google often includes them in the first page of search results based on a newsworthy topic search.
For Google to rank these site highly they look at a number of things; content, bounce rate, internal site referencing (where you link to other pages from your site on a web page) and back links (back links are links coming from another site to yours – ideally you want industry related websites with a good authority of their own to link back to your content, for example Folksy linked back to my website from a guest post I wrote for them on the subject of how to use Instagram Live).
They also rank based on reviews, so make sure you are doing everything you can to deal with negative reviews and make sure future reviews are more positive.
How to develop a site user strategy
Ok, I realise it has been a lot to take in so far, but please bear with me because this bit is just as important. It is so important it’s what I do for a living - Content Marketing for small business owners who don’t have the time, or the skills I have learned in this area… and hey, that’s ok we can’t do everything. This is just what I have focused on to make your life easier.
A marketing strategy for your website content is the plan of how you are going to showcase your web page, or product/service/event page online to gain more traffic over and above basic Google search result traffic.
In its basic form your marketing strategy should include the following;
Seed keyword use in social and email content (including hashtags – this helps in searches and to cement audience learning about how they perceive you. I feel this also translates into less bouncing from your site, because users go to it with some sense of what to expect.)
Clear CTAs to take people from social and email content to a specific web page, in order to perform a desired action
Creating more content for Google owned platforms that help give your site authority through back links. Google owned platforms are sites like; YouTube and Google My Business.
Creating useful content for searchable socials, like Twitter which is Google indexed (Facebook and Instagram are not)
Finding and using other traffic drivers effectively, like Pinterest
Guest posting on related blogs and guest appearances online where you get by-line backlinks to either your home page or a specific web page
Looking for backlink opportunities and building those relationships
That is quite a big list of things to tackle, so take your time to work on each and set out a time plan to work through it. Also bear in mind that most of this will be new to you, so experiment and watch what works and what does not. Where you feel you are lacking, employ an expert.
How long does it take for a simple SEO strategy to work?
I once asked this question myself, because just like you I wanted a clear time frame to my success from my simple SEO strategy. The truth is that giving you a timeline to increased site traffic isn’t that cut and dried, it depends on a multitude of factors; whether you understand, design and effectively deliver on the strategies outlined above and it depends on how long it takes you to implement these things.
Your results also depend on how deep you go into delivering each of these aspects and your deeper understanding of SEO, which is somewhat more complicated than outlined here in the simple SEO strategy, aimed at getting you started.
If you type our question into Google, the top featured snippet will tell you something like 4-6 months before you see results, referencing the consensus of many a SEO agency as a source. Bearing in mind that they will most certainly be using much more complicated tricks to achieve this, whether that is working on website code changes, or using skill sets you might not yet have, it is likely to take you a bit longer to see big results. So, my advice, one small business owner to another, is to expect an impact within 6 months to start to show in your analytics and to continually work on growing this through better strategy over time.
If you need a copywriter to create compelling copy, someone who understands SEO, fill in the project brief form below!
