A step-by-step guide on how to improve your business’s Local SEO

By Sarah Jones|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: |Comments Off on A step-by-step guide on how to improve your business’s Local SEO

 

Date: 24th of January 2024

Written by: Ryan Walsh

There are many businesses that hire digital marketing agencies to help the company to sell even more products on a national or even an international basis.

 

For example, the agency may complete the following work:

– Building backlinks
– Adding schema mark-up
– Adding NAP
– Building business citations
– Building backlinks

 

What is local SEO?

There are now more businesses than ever that want to promote their company locally within the immediate area in which their company is based.

For example, you might just want to get more customers in one single town or city. This is where “Local SEO” can help promote your business to better advertise the products or services you sell.

 

Formulate a detailed marketing strategy

As you walk around the local supermarket, grabbing things that are on offer- you might find that when you return home, you have spent, let’s say, over £100. Yet after all that expense and time, you might not have anything to make a meal out of!
If you have a shopping list, it’s much easier to make a meal plan; therefore, less food goes to waste.

Now you might think that we’re going off topic here are a bit! But trust us we are not, when it comes to search engine optimisation, its important to always have a plan.

It’s too easy to spend, let’s say, 1000 hours in total trying to improve your business’s search engine optimisation, yet you might not get anywhere unless theres a plan of what you need to do.

For example, you should ask yourself?

-How many quality backlinks do we need to get on page one of Google
– Is the website well designed?
-Do we need to add more pages
– How many quality blog posts do we need to write?
-These are just some of the questions you need to consider before you embark on improving your businesses SEO.
You, therefore, need to have a plan of which keywords, and you want to enhance how you can go about it.

 

 

Moz and Ahrefs

We would highly recommend using Moz or Ahrefs for keyword research.

And do make a really detailed marketing plan, as otherwise, you could spend a considerable amount of time trying to improve your company’s SEO and not get anywhere! That’s because you may not create a rounded marketing strategy. This simply means you may overly concentrate on say building links, when really you should spent more time improving the onsite SEO.

 

Carry out a local SEO audit

Hire a top Cardiff SEO consultant

First things first, even if you’re planning on doing the work yourself, talk to a SEO expert first to gain some initial advice to help come up with a marketing plan. This might sometimes be created for less than one thousand pounds. However, its well worth the expense, because, you will have a roadmap for how you can get your company on page one of Google.

The SEO consultant should therefore consider the following when writing your maketing plan:

-How many backlinks do your competitors have
-How many blog posts have they written

– How good is there onsite SEO?

 

Keywords

It’s essential to know which keywords you will optimise your website for. We would highly recommend using Ahrefs, this is the tool we would recommend using.

Some keywords might have an huge search volume and you can check this using “Google Search Console”.

If the keywords have a huge search volume, then this means you will want to get your company on the first page of Google for those keywords. That’s because if they describe a product / service you sell, then by getting your business on page one of Google, for that keyword, your likely to gain more business.

 

Technical SEO

Don’t purchase really cheap website hosting for your company, it’s a total waste of time- instead, you should choose a quality hosting company, which offers fast hosting, such as “Siteground”.

Do make sure the loading times on each and every page and blog post are good. We recommend either A2 hosting or Siteground website hosting.

 

Mobile optimisation

Use mobile optimisation methods, to make sure that your smartphone version of your website works well. Make sure your company website works well on i-phones and android phones.

 

A/B testing

You should use split testing to continuously improve the user experience (U.X) of your website.

 

Keep your Google Business Profile up-to-date

Obtain a Google My Business account and keep it up-to-date your

Ensure that your business obtains a Google Business Profile, it’s free so do obtain one. It only takes around less than an hour to

complete. It is straightforward to verify your business as well, then make sure you add as much detail as possible.

 

You should add the following information to your companies Google My Business account:

– Your businesses opening hours
– Ensure you choose the right business category
– Gain reviews from your customers
– Add your company logo
– Add your companies NAP (Name of business, address and phone number)
– Add a link to the home page
– Add phone number

 

Respond to customer reviews

Customer reviews can be left in many places, such as on Google My Business, Yelp, and other websites like Trustpilot. Therefore, if you do get a bad review, make sure that you respond to it, or if you believe it’s a fake, therefore a malicious view against your business, make sure you flag it as a fake business review.

Obtain a Google Analytics account (its completely free)
Obtaining a Google Analytics or Google Search Console account is completely free and really easy to set up so we would recommend obtaining one if you haven’t already?

A Google Analytics account gives you insight into how many organic visitors are coming to your website, which pages have a high bounce rate, and which pages have better engagement.

 

Keep an eye on your direct competitors SEO

Just like when you’re running your business, and look at the products and services your competitors are offering, you need to do this with your competitor’s SEO. This is so they don’t get a competitive advantage, for example, they may start building do-follow backlinks, from well known company, this could soar them to the top of Google. So you do need to monitor your competitors SEO.

 

We are a very well-known SEO agency that’s located in the heart of Cardiff. If you want to improve your business’s local or national or international search engine optimisation, then why not give our business a ring today? We have SEO consultants which now have well over 10 years experience helping many brands to get to the top of Google.co.uk.

An in-depth guide on how to improve your businesses technical search engine optimisation

By Sarah Jones|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: |Comments Off on An in-depth guide on how to improve your businesses technical search engine optimisation

 

Date: 19 of January 2024

Written by: Ryan Walsh

SEO

 

A detailed guide to help your business to improve its technical search engine optimisation

Is your business looking to improve its technical search engine optimisation, and your organic rankings? Then you come to the right place. We are the experts, as improving the business’s technical SEO. Whether that’s fixing broken links, switching your website hosting so it’s superfast, or perhaps something as simple as adding internal links to improve the indexation of pages. We are the agency to help.

 

Check to see if each page has been indexed or not

Imagine if you spent over 100 hours writing various blog posts, only to find that none of them have been indexed at all. This basically means, they will be helping to improve your company’s search engine optimisation at all. We have seen this happen many times before, to some companies, and sometimes it can be as simple as setting within the content management system that stops that particular page from getting indexed.

If a page can’t be crawled or indexed, then that page will never help to improve your business’s SEO.

The solution is simple, often you need to work with the search engine optimisation company, like ours, to rectify the issue. sometimes a web developer will also be needed. That’s because code might have been written into the header section, such as no index code, that stopped at page from getting indexed. Therefore this code needs to be fully removed, so that the blog post can be indexed.

Sometimes it’s because of what is called a robot.txt file, which is actually stopping the page from getting indexed. This needs to be fixed, that if you want the page to be indexed. Yet often it only takes sometimes just an hour to fix this problem with some businesses.

If you have a relatively simple WordPress website, you might have seven pages or less, so it’s a piece of cake for a web developer to remove the no-index code stopping the page from getting indexed.

On a larger e-commerce website, might take much longer to fix indexation issues.

 

Broken links

This is a problem which a lot of businesses incur, especially e-commerce websites. Let’s say you are selling thousands of products every single week, let’s say you are selling various health and safety items such as gloves, masks and helmets. Then an e-commerce website can readily incur 404 page errors. However thankfully, there are really good tools, such as screaming frog, we might wish to use MOZ which is another brilliant quality tool, for spotting broken links.

 

301 redirects and how to fix broken links

However what the product gets replaced by a newer product, sometimes web designers just delete that page, however, it is perfectly possible that shoppers are finding a broken link through the search engines, which means that they are simply going to competitor’s website rather than yours.

This could cause you not just to lose customers, but also for the 404 errors to increase, causing the e-commerce website bounce rate increase. This bounce rate is increased for a substantial amount of time, then this can negatively impact the business’s search engine optimisation. For example a large amount of 404 errors, that’s because the website to drop off the first page of Google.

This is why if you run an e-commerce business, or you have a brochure website, fix any broken links, such as 404 broken links straightaway.

You should work with your search engine optimisation company, to rectify this issue, for example, they will often use an seo tool, such as ahrefs, or they might use screaming frog which will show them all the various 404 page errors existing on your website in just a matter of only a few seconds.

 

Screaming frog is an absolutely excellent tool, for spotting broken links.

Once you have found these 404 page errors, they should start to be rectified, you might want to do redirects, such as 301 redirects or you might want to recreate the old page and add a different product onto that existing URL. You do need to take some advice, from a marketing agency, on which approach is best for your business.

There are various seo tools, which are very good, such as screaming frog, this tool is actually excellent at finding broken links, such as 404 page errors.

 

Keywords

Difficulty

Your whole website design and technical SEO, as well as the on-site SEO should be geared around which keywords you want to improve your businesses searching engine optimisation for. If Your business has a limited marketing budget, then don’t go after the really difficult keywords, think about instead optimising your website for longtail keywords, it is normally easier for you to see results in a shorter timeframe if you go after longtail keywords.

Check to see if you website works correctly on a tablet, mobile phone and on the desktop

It’s possible sometimes, to visit your web designer, they may show you the website they have just designed and built on say the laptop. And it might look absolutely brilliant, yet what might happen, is that the mobile version the website, it might not be so well designed. For example it could be very difficult for the shopper to use. For example, you could be slow, the main menu might not work correctly, and also it might be difficult to read the text.

There could be other technical issues with the website as well, for example, they could be broken links for example.
So our best advice is this, do make sure that you extensively check your website over before paying the web designer,. sho then also check the website for broken links and other SEO problems on a fairly regular basis, let’s say every three months, because it is possible after WordPress update, such as when plugins updates, that glitches start to occur. These need to be fixed, as otherwise your company’s bounce rate could increase .

 

Choose superfast website hosting

This is a mistake that a lot of businesses can make, that is, the business might be a start-up business and they are looking to reduce their costs on their web design and also their monthly website hosting costs. This sometimes means that they picked the cheapest hosting option that is available to the business, this can sometimes mean that the hosting is super slow.

Don’t purchase super slow hosting, it’s an absolute for the economy because it will damage your companies SEO.

This put your website at a huge disadvantage right from the get go, because how fast your website loads, is a ranking factor. Basically meaning if you have a superfast website, then this is advantageous to your business’s search engine optimisation.

 

Add internal links

This is super simple to do, in matter of fact is’s often only takes a few seconds, yet adding internal links to your blog posts and also across your main pages this could improve the indexation of new pages that have been added. The reason for this is is assist with your website being crawled and indexed, for example, if there is a link from the main page for blog posts, this is likely to be followed and speed up the indexation that particular page.

 

Make sure the main menu is super simple to use

Sometimes some businesses, when having a website designed, sometimes the main menu is not well designed, by the web developer, and this is the problem of the web designer, not the actual CMS.

For example, you should make the main menu an absolute piece of cake to use, with just a few clicks for the customer to get to the exact product or service that they want.

If you are looking for a search engine optimisation consultant, within the city of Cardiff, look no further than our company. We have some of the most highly experienced, marketing consultants and the whole of the city working for us. Some of our consultants, we now have over 10 years of experience, helping to improve businesses local as well as organic SEO.

 

What does “Keyword Cannibalisation” mean?

By Sarah Jones|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: |Comments Off on What does “Keyword Cannibalisation” mean?

 

 

Keyword Cannibalisation

In the realm of digital marketing, particularly in the UK’s ultra-competitive SEO landscape, the concept of keyword cannibalisation has emerged as a crucial factor influencing search engine optimisation strategies. This phenomenon, while often overlooked by some companies, can be a significant hurdle in maximising a website’s search engine visibility and effectiveness.

 

What is “Keyword Cannibalisation”?

Keyword cannibalisation occurs when multiple webpages on a single domain inadvertently compete against each other in search engine rankings by targeting identical or very similar keywords.

So, lets say you sell legal advice and you run a solicitors practice. Let’s say you specialise in offering employment law advice- well, you might have say 5 main pages, which explain that you specialise in offering this service, but how well Google know which is the page to rank for “employment solicitors” as they might all be similar.

This internal competition can dilute the effectiveness of your organic SEO efforts, leading to a fragmented strategy that hinders rather than helps your online presence.

 

How keyword cannibalisation can impact your company’s organic SEO and visitor numbers.

The consequences of keyword cannibalisation are not to be underestimated. Websites suffering from this issue often experience a noticeable decline in organic traffic- as the main pages on your company website may well be competing with each other.
For instance, a study by Moz indicated that addressing keyword cannibalisation can lead to a 9% increase in organic traffic (Source: Moz) This loss of traffic directly correlates to a decrease in potential revenue and leads, making it a critical concern for marketers.

 

Which SEO tools can we use to spot possible keyword cannibalisation issues?

Identifying keyword cannibalisation requires a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of your website’s content marketing.

A good highly experienced SEO consultant should be able to spot the problem relatively quickly. However there are tools you can use like Google Analytics and SEMrush offer insights into keyword rankings and can help pinpoint where cannibalisation might be occurring.

In the UK market, where the level of SEO competition is intense, regular audits of keyword performance are essential to stay ahead.

 

How to address keyword cannibalisation issues

Addressing keyword cannibalisation involves a careful balance of content consolidation, strategic redirection, and keyword diversification. However, every company website is different, so you do need to obtain tailored marketing advice on this. The goal is to create a coherent content strategy that aligns with user intent while avoiding internal competition. Implementing a hub-and-spoke model, where a main ‘hub’ page links to various ‘spoke’ pages targeting related but distinct keywords, is a proven method to combat this issue.

In many cases, addressing keyword cannibalisation isn’t just about fixing a problem; it’s about uncovering opportunities for growth. Consolidating content marketing and refining your keyword strategy can lead to stronger, more focused pages (more in-depth higher word count content marketing) that perform better in search rankings. This proactive approach can transform a potential weakness into a competitive advantage.

Preventing future instances of keyword cannibalisation demands ongoing work from an SEO consultant, and a dynamic approach to content strategy- meaning rather than just keep adding new work, you address problems older pages / blog posts. For example, its worth going through each page to see if it can be improved. This includes regular reviews of keyword performance, staying updated with SEO best practices, (white hat)and adapting to the ever-changing landscape of search engine algorithms. Embracing this proactive mindset ensures that your SEO efforts are both effective and resilient.

In conclusion, keyword cannibalisation is more than just an SEO challenge; it’s a critical aspect of a holistic digital marketing strategy. By understanding its impact, identifying its presence, and implementing strategic solutions, UK marketers can turn this challenge into an opportunity for growth and enhanced online visibility.

For example, rather than having three pages all competing with each other, one page can emerge as the main page, and be improved so its SEO is improved. This page may then rank higher in Google’s SERPs.