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029 2176 2077

hello@top-space-cardiff.co.uk

2 Fitzalan Road Cardiff CF24 0EB

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Introduction

Here at Top Space we specialise in offering organic and local SEO. Within this blog post we are going to concentrate on ways that we can improve a business’s local SEO, and how to do this using white hat methods.

So, whether you’re a builder looking to obtain more work, or you’re a hairdresser looking for more customers, we can help.

Here’s 10 different ways that we can use to improve your company’s online marketing.

#1 Google My Business

First of all, we will see if the business has a Google My Business account or not, if the business has not, then we can set up a Google My Business account for your company.

This normally means that a code will need to be sent via a postcard to your business, once we have the code, we can then verify your Google My Business account for your business.

Once we have verified your business listing, we can then add the following information to the Google My Business listing:

·        Make sure the businesses name, address and phone number is correct (NAP)

·        Add opening hours

·        Make sure that the businesses website address is correct

·        Add a description of the business

·        Make sure that the link is correct

#2 Business citations

We can then build business citations (NAP) for your business; we will make sure firstly that the NAP details on your website are correct.

We will then build business citations, adding your businesses name, address and phone number to each business citation.

It’s really important that your company’s NAP information matches, that’s to say the NAP information should match with your company’s website, the business citations, and your company’s Google My Business account.

All business citations should come from a quality website.

#3 Making sure that your businesses NAP details are correct

If your business has changed its address, or perhaps its phone number, then it’s possible that you will have business citations that do not match.

So, this means that sometimes the NAP details on your website will not match your business citations, or it could be that the business citations do not match with other business citations.

However, most digital marketing agencies will tell you that its important that all business citations match. If the business citations, or the NAP information does not match, then this can cause conflicting business citations, which can sometimes confuse Google’s algorithm as to where is your business located.

So for example, your website may state you are based in Cardiff Bay, which is your new address, yet your business citations say you are located in Roath, Cardiff, which is your old address.

Well, if your business does not have its citations that match with your website, and your SEO company has only updated your website with the new company address, well this could negatively impact your businesses SEO.

Google’s algorithm may not know where your business is based, so for example the algorithm may note your new address, yet say 50 business citations are all saying your business is at the old address, so which may confuse the algorithm, as it may not know where your business is located.

So, this is why sometimes it could affect your company’s SEO.

#4 Content marketing

Many businesses hire marketing agencies to add blog posts to the company’s website, if the digital marketing agency is offering good quality, white hat SEO, then the work should help to improve your businesses rankings, but also the information that your customers read must also be useful.

So for example, your business may sell power tools, such as electric drills, so your SEO agency may write DIY guides, for example how to build wooden decking, and in that blog post the seo agency may mention that they recommend using the electric drill that you sell, therefore offering useful advice, but also promoting the electric drills that your business sells.

#5 Why we recommend hiring us as your SEO company

Whether your business needs help to improve its local SEO, or its organic SEO, you will need an seo agency that offer you white hat seo, and our marketing company can offer this.

We can offer the following white hat seo:

·        Link building

·        Content marketing

·        WordPress websites

·        Anchor text

·        Onsite seo

·        Offsite seo

#6 Add pages

So, let’s say you run an accountancy practice, and most accountancy practices offer many different services. From offering to do your business VAT returns, through to helping to complete your company’s accounts, and also offering advice to self-employed business owners.

So therefore, normally our marketing company would recommend that each main service that your company offers, has its own page. This will allow our marketing company to build backlinks to each page.

#7 White hat

All of the SEO work should be white hat, when you hire our marketing company your business will only offer white hat seo.

#8 Link building

We can build backlinks for your business, we only build quality backlinks, these are the backlinks that can help to improve your businesses SEO.

#9 Schema

Let’s say for example you run a business that sells cars, and your looking to work with a marketing company to help improve your businesses SEO.

Now let’s say you add around 20 different cars to your website each week, and you mention each cars mileage, make, model and other information such as what features the car has, such as air conditioning.

Now let’s say that someone has bought a car from you before, and they want to find your business phone number.

Well, if Google’s algorithm has to look for the phone number through all the information that you have about every car on your website, well this can make it more difficult.

So this is why marketing companies use Schema, this allows us to mark-up important information, such as your business name, address and phone number using Schema, this allows the algorithm to find this information easily and can help to improve your businesses local seo.

#10 FAQ

We think it’s always a good idea to add an FAQ to your website, we can help to write and place an FAQ onto your website.

How we can help:

If you would like a quote for SEO, then why not call us?

You may have invested in a new website for your business, and it may well make an impressive statement about your business.

Yet, as the weeks turn into months, you start to get a bit worried, and that concern is caused by the fact that the phone is not ringing!

In matter of fact your new website is not generating any leads at all!

So, what could be causing this?

Well, its often due to the fact that business needs to invest in organic SEO.

This means that your competitors may have invested in white hat SEO, and therefore their businesses may well be on the first page of Google and therefore the sales may well be flowing into the business.

So obviously the next step is to contact a few agencies, and to ask them to offer you a quote for implementing organic SEO.

Yet, this is often where a lot of confusion can be generated, that’s to say a business owner may well be presented with many quotes, yet the prices may fluctuate massively.

That’s to say where one company is confident that they can deliver for say just a few hundred pounds per month, another couple of agencies may well be quoting thousands per month.

And this generates confusion, with the obvious question as to why do these quotes vary so massively?

Well, thankfully we have years of experience in offering seo to many businesses, and we can therefore call on that knowledge to explain why sometimes the quotes that you get from various agencies often vary and sometimes massively.

White hat or are they cutting corners?

There’s no two ways about it, the only form of SEO that your business needs is white hat.

Yet this takes time to implement, and also a skilled seo consultant is often needed, and as you would expect this comes at a cost.

Yet, then there’s the agencies that try and grab your business, and how do they do that?

Well, they offer deals that seem too good to be true.

And that’s just it, they often are too good to be true

The reason is that these seo companies that offer really cheap deals, well, they may not use the best seo methods, in matter of fact the methods that they do use, well these could be deemed low quality seo methods.

Which means that the business could incur a penalty.

A penalty can mean that the rankings drop or worse the business is removed from the search engine altogether.

So that really cheap deal, well, as you can see could be a total waste of time.

But worse than that, it could cost the business a lot of money if they were to go to another agency and pay them to rectify the previous seo agencies mistakes.

So a word to the wise, only invest in quality

So, what is white hat seo?

White hat seo means that the company is implementing seo correctly. Yet, here’s the thing, some agencies state they are white hat, but in reality, they are not, they are stating that they are white hat to fool the business.

So, you really do have to choose which seo business you use carefully. You only want to use an seo business that offers white hat work.

Location

Okay, so this may sound pretty obvious, yet it’s definitely worth a mention, that is choosing an agency that’s local to you may well be more expensive if your business is based in a major city within the U.K.

So, it may well be worth looking at other agencies, say an agency that’s based in a neighbouring city or town? That’s to see if they can offer your business a better deal?

They may well offer white hat seo, yet the prices may well be more affordable to your business.

It stands to good reason that if your agency is based in a busy city, well their overheads for office space will be higher, so this would need to be passed on to the customer.

Only want to deal with big businesses

Okay, so with so many businesses now acknowledging that quality seo is the only way to go, well sometimes some businesses instantly go with the more expensive agencies.

This means that some businesses think that by paying more they will only receive quality seo. Well, this may well be true, yet your business could be paying over the odds if the seo company has deliberately set its prices higher and is aiming only to deal with larger businesses.

That’s to say some agencies still won’t turn away business if a company is willing to pay its inflated prices, yet that same business may have got a better deal by using another agency.

The really cheap quotes are often worth avoiding, the reason for this is in reality how much work can really be offered for very little money?

Not much is often the answer, so a business does need to be realistic, that’s to say if a lot of seo work is needed, well often this cant be offered for practically no money.

So, it is often a balancing act, that’s between not paying over the odds to an expensive agency, yet not paying so little that the seo agency is not able to implement enough work, or worse implements rubbish seo.

We hope that this blog post has helped you, if your business does require white hat seo, then why not call us?

Introduction

SEO is such a broad subject area, that is why most digital marketing agencies split SEO into broad categories.

That is why you often hear SEO being split into “offsite” and “onsite” seo.

Sure, you could make further groups such as using social media, but let’s just stick to onsite and offsite seo for now.

So, what’s technical seo, well this is a form of onsite seo and we like to think of it as getting your websites foundations right.

So, what do we mean by this?

Well so many companies, and also seo agencies just jump straight into trying to build backlinks and writing new blog posts for your website, but in reality, we think the business should often pause for a second, then think about how their businesses technical seo can be improved.

So we would recommend a business thinks about the following:

Pages

Often a business will offer more than just one service, and if you retail products, well, you may retail thousands of different products.

Now it often goes without saying that often an e-commerce businesses will have separate pages for each product that they sell, yet this is sometimes not the case for businesses that offer services rather than products.

So let’s look at an example, let’s say you are a dentist, and you are having a new website designed for your dental practice.

Now sometimes website designers just think of a website in terms of making it look impressive, so for instance the website may load and you are greeted automatically with a video walking around your dental practice.

Great, but then all of the business’s services are then described on just one page, the home page, even the contact us details are listed at the bottom of the homepage.

Now may sound a good idea, but from an seo perspective its not a good idea, as often most agencies would recommend that you split the different services out onto separate pages.

So for example a separate page for teeth whitening and then another separate page for teeth straightening services.

Why should a business do this?

Well, the answer to that is rather simple, and that is it makes implementing seo easier.

For example each page can have its own description of that service, its own meta title and meta description and also your digital marketing agency can build links to different pages.

So for example, perhaps there’s a really good blog which discusses teeth whitening here in the U.K, in which case your dental practice may have a blog post published on this website, and therefore you could obtain a backlink which is sent to your teeth whitening page.

Crawling and indexing (Googlebot)

Again, you may have a website that looks good, that’s to say it accurately depicts what your business offers, yet with that said if it can’t be crawled and indexed, well it’s not much use.

For example, Google uses Googlebot, it’s Googlebot’s job to crawl and index websites, which simply means that Googlebot reads websites.

This is needed to spot changes that a business has made to its website, but also to evaluate how good that company’s SEO is.

So, in a nutshell if the business hasn’t got a website that can be crawled and indexed, well the business isn’t going to rank in Google.

So, for example, let’s say you run a family law practice and your business specialises in the area of divorce. Well, if your website cannot be crawled and indexed it’s not going to show up for important business keywords, such as “divorce solicitors”.

So how do you fix this issue?

Well, it could be something as simple as the website designers leaving the “no-index” tab left on, so what you need to do is speak to an seo agency for help.

Reduce the number of 404 errors your website has

The reason is that some pages on your business’s website may have high seo value, so for example that service page you were thinking of deleting that described all the various divorce services that your business offers, well it may just have many good quality backlinks leading to that page.

So by deleting that page you may well be throwing away all that seo work, so speak with your seo company first.

Duplication

Here’s a golden rule of SEO that you shouldn’t forget in a hurry, that is don’t use duplicated work.

And what we mean by duplicated work is don’t copy text from your website onto another page on your website, and don’t copy from other websites.

So for example you may retail electrical goods online, let’s say you sell washing machines. Now your website designer may believe they have found a really good time saving idea, that is to copy and paste the product description from the manufactures website- this isn’t a good idea!

In matter of fact it could result in your business incurring a penalty, such as a Google Panda penalty.

So don’t use duplicated work, instead your business should create your own written work. So whether that’s a blog post or a product description, we would recommend writing your own written work.

Many more things that your business should consider

There’s so much more to think about when it comes to improving a businesses technical seo, that ranges from how fast your company’s website loads, right through to having a XML sitemap.

If your business requires further help with its seo, then why not give us a call?

 

Ask any SEO agency what is one of the hardest aspects of SEO, and their bound to come back and say building backlinks.

The reason for this is that a business doesn’t just need to get backlinks from anywhere- no, what the business really needs is good quality backlinks.

So what are good quality backlinks?

Some businesses did, and some still do think that building as many backlinks as they possibly can is a good idea, its not, its likely to get the business hit by a penalty.

The Google Penguin penalty is applied to websites if they build low-quality backlinks. And believe us, this isn’t something you want applied to your website.

It can sometimes take a long time to recover from such a penalty.

So, what’s the solution to avoiding the Google Penguin penalty?

Well, that’s a simple one to answer, to avoid the Google Penguin update your business has to instead build high-quality backlinks.

Here are some of the qualities of a good quality backlink

Good quality information

Let’s say you are looking to purchase a new car, but before you purchase that new car you want to read a few reviews first.

Which website would you trust more?

Website A is written by a car dealership, they only stock that model of car, so let’s face it the information rather biased.

Website B on the other hand, well that website reviews loads of different cars, its also a brand that you recognise.

 

Well of course you would trust website B.

Well the algorithms are making an assessment of their own, that’s to say the algorithms will be working out which website is deemed more important.

How do the algorithms work out which websites are more important, well by working out which websites link to them, and whether the websites linking to them are of good quality.

So, example the car dealership only has say 27 links, and these are from local parts suppliers that supply that business.

Yet business B, the car review website, well that has 2400 links, and these are from good quality websites.

For example, car bloggers, car manufacturers, car dealerships and also other car review websites link to that website. The links are all good quality, so the algorithms will deem that website as more important.

Okay, so my website needs good quality backlinks, but how do you obtain these backlinks?

Our best piece of advice is this, do not purchase backlinks.

We recommend that your business earns links, and here’s how you do just that.

Your business will have knowledge, so you should use that knowledge to write your blog posts.

Why are backlinks so important, what about all the other seo stuff?

Here’s the thing, some businesses and even some seo companies get too caught-up with just optimising one signal, i.e backlinks.

Sure, don’t get me wrong backlinks are important, but there’s loads of other things that often need working on as well.

For example, a business may need to work on improving its content marketing, or perhaps the business has a very high bounce rate, so the seo agency should be working on reducing this.

So what we are getting at is this, backlinks are important, but they should be part of a marketing strategy whereby the seo company is also working on improving the other areas of seo as well.

 

My business simply hasn’t got the time, can your marketing agency help?

Yes, our digital marketing agency specialises in organic seo, so if you would like to obtain a quote then why not give us a ring?

All seo work that we implement is white hat, so why not call us?

 

 

Introduction

Whether your new to SEO and want to know what backlinks are, or you’ve been investing in SEO for sometime now, and you simply want to know why backlinks are important, this is the blog post for you.

Our digital marketing agency will explain why backlinks are so important, and also how to build them.

What are backlinks?

Okay, so let’s start right at the beginning, let’s explain what backlinks are.

Backlinks can either be external backlinks, or they can be internal backlinks, an example of an internal backlink would be say you were reading about a model car on a website, and that business also sells that car, so they offer a link that takes you to a different page, but on the same website.

Now an external backlink is totally different, and with external backlinks this is how you can improve your businesses SEO.

How you do this is to have good quality backlinks, that are relevant to your business pointing at a page or a homepage on your website.

This is how you send what is called “link equity” to a page, but here’s the really important thing, the links must be quality. If the links are not quality, well you could be building low quality links, and low quality links can mean that a business incurs a penalty.

Many businesses have bought or built low quality backlinks, and the algorithms that the search engines use, like Google will detect that the links are low quality. This means the business could incur a penalty, and yes that’s right, you guessed it, the business could incur a penalty such as the Google Penguin penalty.

Why are backlinks important?

Backlinks are so important because there are over 200 signals that Google, and the other search engines calculate in order to work out how important a business is.

Yet, with that said there might be over 200 signals, but this doesn’t mean they are all worth the same.

Some signals are more important than others, and most seo companies, that are white hat believe that good quality backlinks are one of the most important signals there is.

So in a nutshell, lets say your business operates in a highly competitive business sector, let’s say for example you run a marketing agency, well often that marketing agency will need backlinks, that’s because its more than likely that the businesses direct competitors will have backlinks, and this means the business should be looking to also obtain backlinks.

Why must the backlinks we build be quality?

So many businesses make the mistake of thinking that they need more backlinks regardless of quality.

This is a big mistake, as what a business needs is more backlinks, but for the backlinks to be of quality.

So yes, you got it, its not worth building low quality backlinks. With this in mind it’s far better to have say 100 good quality backlinks, that it would 10,000 rubbish quality backlinks.

So, how do you build backlinks?

Right, well this is the really important part, so listen up!

Some digital marketing agencies would recommend that you send out loads of e-mails asking businesses for a backlink- however, we do not recommend this method.

Here’s what we recommend instead, we recommend that your business produces written work which offers really good quality information.

So, for example let’s say you are a dentist, and your dental practice is going to start offering cosmetic dentistry.

So, you want your website to start attracting customers that what their teeth whiter, and also have teeth straightening.

We would therefore recommend that your business writes guides explaining which services your dental practice offers. But to tailor the advice around questions that your dentists frequently get asked.

So, for example, a person may know that they want to get their teeth straighter, but they may not know what the procedure involves.

So, using the skill and knowledge of the dentist, your dental practice may write a series of blog posts that offer advice on what the teeth straightening procedure involves.

If this information is of a really good quality, then other websites may link to the work. 

Can your SEO agency help?

Yes, we are white hat SEO experts, if your business would like a no obligation quote, then why not call us?

Introduction

Let’s be fair, these days there are quite simply a million and one things that a business can do to promote their company.  

So, with that in mind business owners have to be given a pretty good reason to sign-up to a service.

Yet, with that said, we don’t think there’s an easier way to improve your businesses SEO than setting up a Google My Business account. Its super simple to do, plus you by doing this your business stands an increased chance of being displayed within the local business results.

This blog post is therefore dedicated to explaining what a Google My Business account can offer a business.

So, what exactly is a Google My Business account?

In a nutshell, by setting up a Google My Business account you are setting up an company profile that can then be displayed in the Google My Business results.

So, let’ say for example your looking to purchase a new pair of running shoes, and you are in a hurry to get these so your looking to purchase locally. If the business therefore has a Google My Business account, then the business can be displayed in the local business listings when a phrase is searched for that the business can offer.

So in this case it might be “shops that sell running trainers” or “a local shop that specialises in running shoes”.

Now, it’s worth keeping this in mind, Google normally only shows 3 local businesses in the local business listings, so competition for this space can be mighty fierce.

And the reason for this is that within city there may well be over 100 places that also sells running shoes for example, so as you can imagine, if there’s only three spaces where your business can be placed the competition will be fierce.

How can you optimise a Google My Business listing?

Normally an seo agency will be asked by a client to improve where the business ranks organically and also to help get the business get ranked in Google’s local business listings as well.

Here’s some of the information that we will add to a Google My Business listing in order to improve its chances of being ranked in the 3 business listings.

Ensure that the NAP information is consistent

Most digital marketing agencies would agree that its important that the businesses NAP information is consistent.

As well as being consistent the information should also be kept up to date.

So if you do not know what NAP means, well NAP simply means the name of your business, its address and phone number.

Seo companies use this information in order to improve a company’s local seo.

Business reviews

An important part of the local SEO process is to obtain business reviews from your customers.

However, for the reviews to help improve your businesses SEO they must also be real reviews.

So, what we mean by this is, do not write fake business reviews. The reason is Google and the other search engines algorithms have ways of spotting fake business reviews, and if your business does obtain fake business reviews, well it will stand a much lesser chance of being displayed in the Google My Business results.

So, the only business reviews that will help your business will be genuine business reviews from customers.

Make your Google My Business listing better than that of your competitors

Some of your competitors may have not added much in the way of company information to their Google My Business account.

If your competitors therefore have been a bit lazy, well this then presents your business with an opportunity. Your business could therefore create a more detailed Google My Business account.

For example, if you have photos of your shop front, or your team that you could add, well why not do this?

Also why not write a detailed business description, if your company profile has more information added to it well this can help to improve your businesses seo.

Keep your account up to date

So many businesses change addresses, or say their phone number from time to time, yet then forget to update their Google My Business account along the way.

So, in all that hustle and bustle of moving addresses, and sorting out new phone numbers, well it’s easy to forget to change your company address or phone number on your Google My Business account.

However, this can cause what is called a “conflicting citation”- this means that your website may say your business is based at one address, yet your Google My Business account may say that your business is based at another address.

Its important therefore to keep all accounts updated, as otherwise the algorithms can get confused as to where your business actually is based.

Onsite SEO

When we’ve created a Google My Business account, we then normally move onto the businesses onsite seo.

So, we therefore recommend that your business works with a white hat seo company, that’s to see if improvements can be made to your businesses onsite seo as well.

How we can help

Many businesses pay an online marketing agency like ours, to improve their businesses SEO each month.

We therefore can implement organic and local seo for your business, if you would like to obtain a totally no obligation quote, then why not call us today?

Introduction

So many digital marketing agencies now publish blog posts on how you can improve your businesses local SEO.

The advice on offer can range from adding Schema mark-up, right through offering advice on how to build high-quality backlinks.

Yet, more often than not this advice often comes with a massive amount of marketing jargon. This can be off-putting for businesses that just want to get on with improving their businesses SEO.

So, whether you’re a local accountant, or a builder, if you want to improve your companies local seo, here’s our top tips for doing just that.

#1 Add blog posts

Some businesses pay for websites that look impressive, yet sometimes some websites can lack the most basic of seo details.

For example, when visiting the businesses website it may look great, yet the meta titles, meta descriptions, alt tags and loads of other information may well be missing.

Also, some businesses may not add blog posts, and often what are needed are detailed blog posts.

Now we know what your thinking, your thinking well we haven’t got the time to be writing long blog posts.

Well, this may well be true, but with SEO you have to beat your competitor’s SEO in order for your business to rank higher.

So, if your competitors are adding high-quality blog posts, well this is something your business should think about doing also.

Of course, you could always hire a white hat digital marketing agency like us to help you.

#2 Make sure the basics are sorted

Too often businesses start paying for SEO, to help build say backlinks, yet the most basic of SEO tasks have sometimes not been sorted first.

So, for example, perhaps the business offers many different services, yet these services do not have their own page, that’s to say all the services are on the same page. If you are an SEO expert you will know that trying to get a business to rank for different keywords, while having all of the business’s services described on one page, well this can be a mighty difficult task.

For example, let’s say you run a local construction business, and you want to invest in local seo, and you want to promote your businesses services. These services are loft conversions, home extensions and new building new homes.

So, we would normally recommend that the business has a separate page on the website for each service that the business offers.

Then this way the business can add the following SEO elements to each page:

·        Meta title and meta descriptions

·        Alt tags

·        Product or service descriptions

·        Internal backlinks with anchor text

·        All onsite seo should be implemented in a white hat way.

#Build backlinks

Most seo agencies, including ours, believe that backlinks are a very important part of the SEO process.

So, your business may wish to build high-quality, and relevant backlinks. However, with that said, if backlinks are built incorrectly, then a business can incur a penalty.

So, we would recommend working with a white hat seo agency in order to build backlinks for your business.

#4 Obtain white hat seo advice

If your business is implementing SEO yourselves, well we would recommend asking a white hat seo company for advice.

Now, you might be thinking, sure, your bound to say that, you’re an online marketing agency, that’s true, but what’s also true is if the seo is implemented incorrectly, well your business could incur a penalty.

A penalty can mean that your website drops in terms of where it ranks, so you might have been on the first page, but after a penalty you may well  be on the 11th page.

So we always believe its worth paying for some advice from a white hat seo company. After all Google, and the other major search engines are always perfecting their algorithms, which means that websites that use low quality seo often get penalised.

If your business requires further help, why not give us a ring?

 

Introduction

There is now so many forms of digital marketing that a business can invest in. This ranges from investing in social media advertising, right through to organic SEO.

So with all these different forms of marketing a business, well its no wonder that some business owners can often get quickly confused as to where they should spend their marketing budget.

So, we thought what was really needed was a blog post explaining what local seo is and how it can be used to help your business.

So here you have it, our comprehensive guide explaining what local SEO is.

What does local SEO mean?

Simply put, local SEO allows you to advertise your business on a local level. So when people are looking for the goods or services that your business offers locally, well your business can appear right in front of them on the first page of Google.

This is achieved through investing in SEO, which can mean that time is spent working out which phrases your business should appear for.

Then often a white hat seo company is used to optimise a businesses ranking signals.

Ranking signals can range from backlinks, right through to adding content marketing onto your website.

So for example, let’s say you run a law practice, and you specialise in family law. By working with a white hat digital marketing agency, they can get your website to appear for “family law solicitors + the name of the city or town” for example.

Google My Business (map listings)

Here’s the great thing about local SEO, your business could appear twice on the first page of Google.

That’s because your business could appear within the Google My Business results, and also within the organic business listings.

So a really good SEO company should be aiming to get your business to appear within both.

Why do SEO agencies keep referring to an “Algorithm”

Well, its Google’s algorithm which decides where a business ranks. That’s to say Google’s algorithm could place your website on the first page, that’s if the seo is really good, if its not then your business may appear on say page 10.

A really common question that we get asked is this, when a business gets to the first page of Google, can the business then stop paying for SEO?

So this means some businesses believe that once their business has climbed the ranks, it can then stay there and some businesses think that its no longer worth investing in SEO.

However, when a business does get to the first page of Google, well this is often when the business has to start working harder than ever to retain that position.

The reason being is there will often be a large amount of businesses that will want to take that position, so if their SEO is better than your businesses, then your business will be forced to move down.

This is often why seo businesses like ours, charge a fixed monthly fee.

Onsite SEO

A really important part of local seo is making sure your business onsite SEO is correctly optimised.

Although onsite SEO is often an ongoing process, i.e adding blog posts to the website, there are still many areas of a company’s website that need onsite seo implemented to improve the website.

For example, meta title and meta descriptions should be written for each page. Your seo agency should be able to recommend many ways that your companies onsite SEO can be improved.

This may well include:

·        Adding Schema mark-up

·        Alt tags

·        Meta titles and meta descriptions

·        Internal backlinks

·        Changing product or service descriptions

·        Adding blog posts

Keep it white hat

When shopping around for an SEO company to partner with, often all the various seo agencies will return a wide range of prices.

Some agencies may well be very cheap, yet some others may be so expensive that the quotes may come as a surprise to the business.

Yet, one thing is for sure, that is whichever business you choose, you have to make sure that the seo work implemented is white hat.

If the work is not white hat, then your business may incur an algorithmic or a manual penalty.

A penalty, such as a Google Penguin penalty can mean that your companies website drops, so where it might have been on the first page of Google, it may drop to say page 11 of Google.

Also sometimes a business that has been hit by a penalty, can be removed altogether.

What are business citations?

If you invest in local seo, then you should hear your marketing agency talk about business citations.

This sounds complicated but in matter of fact it is not, business citations are just mentions of your businesses NAP information.

NAP stands for name of your business, the businesses address and also the businesses phone number.

Now this information should be on your website, then the same NAP details should be written for your business’s citations.

What are backlinks?

To help improve your businesses SEO, you will often need backlinks. The business will therefore need high-quality backlinks, these backlines must also be relevant to your business.

By relevant we mean that say for example you run a dental practice, well there’s no point in obtaining a backlink from say your accountant’s website, as this would not be a relevant backlink.

Can we help?

If your business requires further help with your SEO, then why not give us a ring?

Introduction

Often when shopping around for an SEO quote for your business, you will undoubtably hear the term “backlinks” crop up time and time again.

That’s to say for a business to get onto the first page of Google often what is required is high-quality backlinks.

So, most business owners understand that they need backlinks, but a lot do not know what exactly they are or how to obtain backlinks.

Well, if such a questions are your mind you’ve come to the right place. We are white hat seo experts.

Why are backlinks so important?

Most businesses want to be appear on the first page of Google, yet do just that the business will need SEO in order to optimise the businesses ranking signals.

Now, there are over 200 ranking signals for each website, and you guessed it, the businesses that have the strongest ranking signals are the businesses that get ranked on the first page of Google.

Yet, with that said, its also worth knowing that not all ranking signals are worth the same.

This means that some ranking signals are more important than some others. Most seo companies think that backlinks are one of the most important ranking signals there is.

However, backlinks should always be built in a white hat way, and the backlinks must be of quality.

Quality backlinks

If a business was to build rubbish quality backlinks, well this means just one thing, and that is the websites likely to incur a penalty.

Most business owners will have heard of the Google Penguin updates, a lot of businesses will also know of a business that has received such a penalty.

It can often mean that the website drops substantially in terms of where it ranks, so for example, it may have been on the first page before the penalty, then after it may have been on page 10.

Also, some businesses will have been removed altogether.

This is why all businesses require quality backlinks. The backlinks should be built in a white hat way also.

 

So, what exactly are internal and external backlinks?

Internal backlinks are simply backlinks that when you click the link, the link will take you internally on that website.

So, let’s say for example you run a digital marketing agency, and a business owner is looking for an agency that offers local seo, well clicking on the button, or anchor text named “local seo” would be an example of an internal link.

External backlinks are what businesses need to help improve where the business ranks.

This means that more often than not the businesses that are ranked on the first page of Google will often have high-quality backlinks.

These backlinks will be external, meaning other websites have chosen to link to that website.

So let’s say for example you run a car dealership, and the car manufacturers website links to your website, well this would be an example of an external backlink.

The backlinks that seo companies like us are looking to build are high-quality backlinks that are do-follow.

Do-follow backlinks simply means the backlink sends link juice, and its link juice that can help to improve where a business ranks.

Yet, more often than not, the businesses that rank on the first page haven’t just got a few good quality backlinks, they will often have many good quality backlinks.

However, even though marketing agencies, and businesses are looking for good quality backlinks that are do-follow to help improve the businesses seo, its also important to have some no-follow backlinks as well.

Even though no-follow backlink don’t pass link juice, most seo agencies still want some no-follow backlinks simply because if a backlink profile just has do-follow backlinks, well it can look artificial.

Therefore white hat seo companies like us build both no-follow and do follow backlinks.

What exactly does anchor text mean?

So many businesses have incurred link penalties, such as a Google Penguin penalty because they have built low quality links. However, many businesses have received penalties because they have over-optimised the backlinks anchor text.

This means using both internal and external backlinks, the business may have used the same terms within the anchor text in an excessive way.

So for example, let’s say you run a skip hire business in a major city, you may have used “skip hire + city name” too much in the anchor text.

So the anchor text needs to be written in a white hat way. If you do not know what anchor text means, well its simply the word or sentence that you click on in order to follow a link.

This means you may well be on a recycling website, and they offer a link to a local skip hire business.

So the anchor text would be for example “skip hire company”.

How should our business be building backlinks?

We strongly recommend partnering with a white hat seo company in order to build backlinks for your business.

Yet, we also believe that the best way to obtain backlinks is to earn them, so what we mean by this is that you should offer really useful information on your website.

So for example, let’s say you run a solicitors practice, and you specialise in property law, well why not publish blog posts explaining what a person or couple should do when buying a home.

You could offer advice on how the home buying process works, how long it takes roughly for your business to handle the process. Also you could even offer rough estimates for how much your law practice charges.

Then people who read this blog post may wish to link to your work, so for example, a blog that offers advice about how to renovate your home may link to your website. This way you are obtaining backlinks.

However, with that said, your seo agency or your business must still check that the backlinks your business has are good quality. If your website has a lot of rubbish quality backlinks, then you should seek the advice of your seo company.

Introduction

When most of think about SEO, we often think that it’s an area of marketing that’s super complicated. And its fair to state that certain areas of seo are complicated, like building backlinks or reducing a website bounce rate.

Yet, with that said we think that there are still loads of different ways a business that you can improve your businesses onsite seo, and it shouldn’t take an eternity.

And this got us thinking, which methods do we think can be implemented to improve a businesses onsite seo easily?

Well, we didn’t come up with just one or two suggestions, we come up with 8!

Adding blog posts

You can add blog posts to your website to improve your seo, yet you can also get it so wrong that it can also damage your businesses seo if you don’t know what you are doing.

So, you really do have to understand white hat seo, that’s before you go adding blog posts.

That’s to say we believe your business should follow these golden rules:

·        Don’t use content marketing that has been duplicated

·        High-quality, so aim to make the blog posts useful, such as offering good quality advice

·        White hat, so don’t keep mentioning the same words too often, also you must understand the white hat rules!

·        Relevant to your business

On top of all that, if you do write blog posts yourself, we would recommend you also seek the advice from a white hat marketing agency.

The reason for this is that quite often some businesses outsource some elements of their seo, and write the content marketing themselves.

However, here’s the thing, if the content marketing is not white hat, well it can result in a business incurring a penalty.

So, for example, let’s say you run a dental practice, and you want your business to rank higher for “dentists + city name”. If you do not implement white hat seo, you may over optimise the website, which can mean a penalty can be incurred.

So always consult with a white hat agency to obtain advice.

Internal backlinks

Let’s say your writing a blog post, yet you don’t want to deviate away from the main point of the blog post, yet you are citing some terms that a lot of people will not have a clue what they mean, well this is where internal backlinks can be useful.

For example, let’s say you run a solicitor’s practice, that specialises in employment law, and you offer advice regarding how to take your previous employer to court. Well, such a blog post is likely to have loads of terms to do with employment law that the average person will not have a clue what they mean, so why not use internal backlinks to highlight the terms?

This will then allow the reader to choose whether they wish to click the link and find out what the word means.

This can help your readers understand what complicated terms mean, yet it can also help to reduce your businesses bounce rate.

The bounce rate can be reduced because instead of a reader bouncing off the website, in order to find a better answer, they may stay on your website for longer.

And many leading digital marketing agencies think that if a visitor spends longer on a businesses website, then if this is sustained it can sometimes have a beneficial effect on the businesses rankings.

This is as opposed to a business that might have a very high bounce rate, and therefore the rankings may decrease as a result of having a high bounce rate.

Meta title and meta description

So, you may have a newly created website, and it looks like your web design agency have done a fab job, yet sometimes the most basic of seo elements may well be missing.

This means the website may look great, yet it may missing meta titles and meta descriptions.

And this is often a really simple fix, yet if don’t have the foggiest as to what meta titles and meta descriptions are, well let us explain.

Let’s say your looking for a new washing machine, so you search for “washing machines + brand name”.

Now you are presented with loads of businesses, some are PPC adds, well others are organic business listings.

So even though your SEO agency has done a brilliant job, and got your website onto the first page of Google, you still have to get people to click on your business.

This is often referred to as improving the businesses CTR, or click through rate. A great way of improving your businesses CTR is to write a good meta title and meta description, also to couple this with schema.

So, for example, returning back to our washing machine example, you may write something that will make the person want to click on your business, such as a special offer on a washing machine, or that you offer free delivery for example.

 

Separate pages

Sometimes a business is just in a rush to set a website up, so they go to a website designer and opt for an affordable option.

Yet, what might happen is the website designer just groups everything the business offers on one page on the website.

So for example, a plumber may offer many different services ranging from boiler repair to offering to fit an entire bathroom.

Therefore your seo company may recommend that for each service that the business offers, a separate page is created.

Mobile friendly

Your digital marketing agency should make sure that your website is mobile friendly.

Easy to use

You and your marketing team should ensure that every aspect of the website is easy to use. What we mean by this is say its difficult to use your businesses shopping cart, because let’s say it doesn’t allow a shopper to return to the website if they’ve forgotten to purchase an item, well this could mean shoppers abandon the website.

This could cause a high bounce rate to occur, so your seo agency should work with your business to ensure that your website is easy to use.

Bounce rate

Your online marketing agency and your business should aim to reduce your websites bounce rate as far as possible.

If you would like any more white hat seo advice, then why not give us a ring?