The advantages of SEO marketing, over advertising (SEA), are that advertising will have no effect on your site’s presence in search results. Google never accepts money for including or ranking sites in their search results.
1. How can SEO help your business?
The main reason for a website is that it can help people. Either you offer interesting services for your visitors, or you explain something, teach something, or simply amuse them.
When you post something on social media or upload a video on youtube, chances are your main goal is to get as many interactions as possible. Did you create a fun video? Of course you want people to see it! The same goes for your website. When you’re offering the most comfortable chairs in town, you need to make sure everyone knows it!
SEO is done to help people find what they need. When someone Googles a comfy chair, they’re probably looking for a comfy chair. If your chair doesn’t appear in the results, you’re missing out! (and your competitors win)
It is important to know how people search/research the products or services you offer. The power of SEO is to deliver the right content to users who are looking for it. Someone searching in French probably wants to see results in French.
Conversely, showing up in search results for services you don’t offer will cause visitors to bounce back to your website. Those are bad SEO points!
2. Do you need a professional website?
Your business will be hard to find without a website. Should it be professional? Depends. A strong website has the potential to become the digital engine of your business and in many cases will be the first thing people see about your business.
Do you need a professional website for SEO? Not really, but having a slow website that doesn’t perform fluently on mobile won’t give you good SEO rankings. If you hire a professional SEO company, the first step is probably just to improve your website. We offer SEO Kickstarters that will do just that. Bring your current website up to modern standards that SEO and search engines love.
You can do as much keyword research and competitor analysis as you want. I would say for most things you need a solid foundation to start with. SEO is a slow but steady process that is easy to follow. But you just can’t dive into it right away. Want to rank higher on Google? Take a deep breath and take a second look at your current website.
Does it charge quickly?
- Is it responsive?
- Does your content match your favorite SEO keywords?
- Is it user friendly and well structured?
- Do you have references to and from other websites?
- Do you use title and meta tags?
Are all images on the website optimized?
Search engines have a different approach to your website than actual visitors. They want to provide the best user experience to their users, so if you have a slow or heavy website, SEO will be more difficult.
You can spend double the amount on a marketing or SEO agency that is harder to sustain in the long run. Starting with a solid foundation will make the whole process easier AND improve your overall website at the same time! Win-win!!
3. SEO for a local business
People are lazy! Do you want to find “the best restaurant” or “the best restaurant nearby”? How often have you searched Google for something containing these keywords? nearby, nearby, in my area, … The result will be higher than you think. Another SEO trick you may not know, but search engines will automatically push things near your location.
Googling “Best SEO Agency” will give you different results in French than when you Google the same thing in switzerland. Simply that Google knows you’re not looking for a business in switzerland when you’re in. (But we are both in French and switzerland …)
Local SEO is a very important aspect of your SEO game plan. People don’t do anything but look at their phones. With the rise of digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant,… They all focus on location for people who search for things while on the go.
Simple tricks for local SEO are using local landing pages, where you can focus on your services for that particular domain. Don’t just use location, but people in those regions may use other keywords or have different interests. Use a correct address, contact details like e-mail and telephone, opening hours,… Google Maps and Google My Business are also excellent SEO tools for your business! But more on that later in this article.
Nevertheless… Make sure you have a functional mobile website when you go for local SEO!
4. Enterprise SEO
Enterprise SEO adds a whole new level of complexity to SEO that can be overwhelming. The competition in these areas is mind-boggling. Does your business need SEO at these levels? Look for an SEO company that is passionate and lives for these challenges! (index)
Most of the time, enterprise SEO competes for the most expensive keywords out there. These keywords are both high in search volume and high in value. Examples are purchase intent keywords and all the internet giants are eager to get them. Think Amazon, Bol.com, Wikipedia,… When you go up against them, you need a dedicated SEO team and strategy.
SEO companies will monitor the state of your website and modify their strategy accordingly. They track impact versus effort and routinely work with the marketing team.
It is very important that the SEO company you choose is a perfect fit for your business. Being on the same page is very important, fast and clear communication, specific needs or objectives and a clear request for proposal (RFP) to make sure you are 100% sure before teaming up with a partner SEO.
5. Multilingual SEO
A multilingual website… Sounds normal, but I keep seeing a lot of errors on multilingual websites. But here in switzerland, almost every website we create has to be multilingual. Most companies think it’s just about translating content from Dutch to French or English. But believe me, by doing this you will do more harm than good (for SEO purposes).
As said at the beginning, a solid foundation will greatly facilitate your company’s SEO adventure. Translations belong to this setting. it’s not just the content that needs to be translated.
Be sure to translate:
- Titles and content (obviously)
- Your website’s page URL and internal links
- Categories and tags with their slug
- Meta titles and descriptions
- Images (the image name and alt text)
- Forms, buttons, emails, thank you pages,…
- Use correct canonical href-lang tags
- Publish a language only when it is fully translated
- Use language directories and NOT subdomains (golden tip #2)
Reading this article again, SEO sounds like a checklist for a good website. Improving your SEO will improve your website and vice versa. A decent SEO company will make sure the translations on your website are done the right way.
A golden tip : don’t automatically redirect users to a translated version of your website based on their browser language! It sounds tempting and a good service for your visitors, but it makes it harder for Google to index all the different languages. (certainly when not all your content is available in all languages)
Search engines are smart. If you have a page in both English and Dutch, Google will present the correct language version of your page that it thinks is best for the user. Depending on the keyword, location, and probably other parameters as well.
Another golden tip: don’t use subdomains for your translations! You hurt your SEO by redirecting users to another subdomain. It splits your visitors across multiple domains. Also, external backlinks to your website should choose the domain they link to. If 3 French sites link to your French page and 5 other sites link to your main domain, having the French site set up as a directory will increase your main site’s backlink count by 8! Another successful SEO trick.
6.Google My Business
Google My Business is a great off-page SEO technique. It is also a must! Even if you don’t even want to do SEO. If you haven’t set it up for your business yet, create a Google My Business profile now! You can continue this article later.
When people search for your business name directly in Google, they see a business card of your business on the right side of the search results. It provides essential business information on the spot. Name, address, contact details, opening hours, customer reviews,… I strongly encourage you to claim your Google business profile as soon as possible.
Claiming your business on Google My Business will automatically tag your business on Google Maps. Another excellent winning off-page SEO technique. When your business is on Google Maps, your business is featured in search when people near your business search for your services. You don’t even have to do anything for it.
Other important SEO tools are Apple Maps and even Waze my Business. For the same reasons as Google Maps. People also use these apps a lot to do research!
