Since the pandemic, there has been an increase of businesses of all shapes and sizes moving online towards e-commerce, which also highlights the need for them to stay relevant, visible, and reputable now more than ever. One of the many effective marketing strategies that independent retailers can learn and profit from is SEO.
What is SEO?
SEO is the acronym for "search engine optimization." It is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of getting your website or business site to be on the first page of a target search engine like Google, Bing and Yahoo through paid or organic (also known as free) advertising.
The Basics
Search engines are like answer machines in which tons of content gets evaluated to determine which one is most likely to answer your query
They do all of this by identifying and cataloguing all of the available content on the internet, i.e. web pages, images, PDFs, by using algorithms and bots that travel the entire web in seconds through a three-part discovery process known as ’crawling, indexing and ranking’. The final process of ranking is where the content is rated by how well the content matches the query.
How high in the rankings and how often you appear is based on merit and if you want to score, you need to do these three things:
- Make it clear who you are and what your business offers
- Convince the search engine that you are the most credible option
- Make your content deliverable
What you don’t want to do is focus on a large proportion of your time on ’keywords’ as there are other factors that affect SEO ranking.
How does a good website improve SEO ranking?
Search engines reward sites that are user friendly which also means they have high usability. Google favours those that are not only rich in keywords but also show user engagement. Here we look at the factors that contribute to not only the usability on your site, but also help improve SEO ranking.
- Utilise Google Search Console for Keyword Targeting
Perhaps one of the most useful SEO tools is Google’s Search Console, you can look at a report displaying what key phrases people use to find your content and how often people visit the content because of those terms. You can then determine the best methods for targeting specific keywords and phrase
- Create information rich content
Dwell time is the amount of time visitors spend on your website and it can affect SEO ranking.
When you provide useful content which aims to educate, inspire or engage, it is always good practice to use catchy titles and optimise different formats e.g. a DIY shop can create a video on how to assemble flat pack furniture. Visitors tend to stay longer on your website to consume the information. Content can always be improved or repurposed in different ways too.
- The page loading speed
Search engines such as Google and Bing take page-loading speed into consideration in their website ranking algorithm. You can risk users leaving your site if they have to wait even just a few extra seconds for each page to load. Using tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights will give you a good benchmark of how fast your site loads.
- Image Optimisation
Besides image file format and sizing, there are other way to make your images work for you, you can signal relevancy of your content to search engines by using keywords for your file name.
- Contact us page
Websites that have sufficient contact information on their website and use Google My Business are considered to be more trust worthy. Therefore it is useful to update your opening hours, location, contact details, website and give importance to reviews. You can find more useful information from our recorded webinar with Google My Business and Pointy here.
How can Bira Help?
Bira members can benefit from everything you need to start selling online with a 28-day free trial from EKM.
Additional Guidance and Resources
Pointy by Google helps you to easily display your in-store products on Google.