A few weeks ago, we wrote a blog that was well-received entitled '8 Strategies On How To Optimise Your Website for Voice Search And Why To Do It?' In this article, we went over how you could optimise your website for voice search as a future-proofing exercise. It then dawned on us; we may have put the cart before the horse! We were presuming people had already invested time in looking at their SEO, analysing it and implementing the basic concepts. Of course, this all takes time, and you may not have got around to doing this in all the hustle and bustle of running your business. On this note, we thought we would put this guide together for you that would complement our previous blog and start you out on some healthy primary Ninja habits. We have only covered three foundation steps here, but we will cover more advanced stages in an ongoing series of blogs on this subject. (Please subscribe at the end of this blog for future articles) Our advice is to make sure the foundation steps are solid first. Then you will not waste time further up the road on advanced strategies that are not working because of shaky foundational steps. So let's start from the beginning.
Starting from the very beginning
First things first, when we start on the SEO improvement path of enlightenment, we look at all the amazing advice, and there is a temptation to go all Bruce Lee on it. You know, a thousand press-ups on your knuckles, lighting matches in mid-air with your nunchucks, that sort of thing. We get it, the secret science of SEO is exciting, and the temptation is to go straight to the more complicated stuff! But why try the 1000 press-ups when you have a bad back and a dodgy shoulder!? Lets pause and see our physio first, you know, get all our joints and back aligned. Then work our way up to the starring role of 'Enter the Dragon'! What is a press-up without the core foundation being strong before you start? So what is the first foundation step?
1: Build Your Customer Personas
So what is the customer or buyer Persona? And why should we start the road to SEO with them? Buyer Personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers. You base this fictional customer on real data and research that you already have from your existing customers and your competitor analysis. Buyer Personas help you understand your existing and prospective customer habits much better. There is never just one Persona; there may end up being many that help you to understand how to drive the direction of your SEO. This then makes it much easier to tailor your SEO, keywords, content, product development and services to meet the buying behaviours of existing and potential customers. Personas are often used in content marketing. If you are writing content for the wrong type of person, then you are wasting precious marketing resources. So we usually start the whole marketing process off by really understanding our customers, delving into their attention and buying triggers by using Personas.
Although Personas used to be the preserve of inbound marketing and content creation, we feel you should always start your SEO process off with a persona building prosses too! Your building blocks of SEO must be directed in the right way from the very beginning. Doing this as a first step, it also gives you an amazing resource of information for when you do start your content marketing, which is also one of the many pillars of good SEO that we will go into in later articles!
OK, we hear you say, but I still do not get what they are, and how to create them? Well, we have you covered. One of the best marketing platforms out there is Hubspot, and it has a great article on what Personas are and how to create and use them. Have a look at the article on Hubspot here. But just as a little heads up here is a preview of a Persona template from the Hubspot resources pack you get with the article.
Now we have you safely turned on to Personas, let's get to foundation part two....
2: Audit Your Website
Yes, let's see what we are starting with, let's dig in deep under the hud of your website and make sure we fix some of the basics before we move on. For this, there are many tools out there. First up is Neil Patel's website, he has a gold mine of information on marketing and SEO, and amazing mini-courses too. His SEO checker is here, it is a great place to start and will spot the potential fundamental problems you need to fix. Also, head over to Woorank and see just what's going on with your website's performance. There are lots of services out there, just google 'SEO Website Checkers'. I like these two for a good overview of what is happening in terms of website performance and SEO fixes. They will give you a website score and highlight potential problems for improvement, these could be things like:
Title Tags
Meta Description
Header Tags (H1 H2 etc.)
Content
URL issues
Sitemaps Validity
Broken Links
Slow webpage loading
Mobile-friendliness
Security
Backlink score
Trafic ranking, and much more....
3: Analyse Your Website Data
OK, now we have a list of potential website problems that we can fix, the last piece in the foundational jigsaw is linking your google service like Google Analytics, and Search Console to your website. Have you got the tracking code on your website already? If not install it now, you will need it to analyse what is going on with your website traffic and the behaviour of your potential customers when they arrive on your website.
Looking at how people behave once they land on your site is worth its weight in gold. Google Search Console tracks data and key metrics, like the number of sessions you have and bounce rates, to name a few. You can see who your referral sources are and how people move around your website. Getting to know all this data will make you better at finding any potential problems on your website. Google Analytics is user-oriented, giving you data on who is visiting and interacting with your website. Google Search Console, is a search-engine focused analytic tool, unlike Google Analytics, which gives you customisable data in an easily-managed format. Google Search Console offers more suggestions, highlighting problem areas for improvement. If you want to crack down on SEO development, this can be a great tool to harness.
The Conclusion
There endeth your three foundational steps. The yellow belt is firmly around your waist. You have all the information you need to implement all the trick flicks and Kung Fu kicks you need to start to become the JuJu Chan or Bruce Lee of SEO. Why? Because you now know who your target audience is and how to engage with them. You are on the road to fixing simple issues on your website that can harm your search engine rankings. And finally, you can now see patterns of what people do when they are on your website. You can improve their experience and increase customer conversions. You now have the structure and customer intelligence, and these are foundational steps to build on, this is real ninja stuff!! As Bruce would say, 'Be Water My Friend!'
Do you do all this already? Would you like more articles on SEO in the future? Let us know, or subscribe to our regular blog articles HERE.