We are delighted to welcome Guest blogger Caroline from 4CMarketing. Caroline is one of our marketing consultants and she wrote this article after visiting The Business Show in London. Thank you for letting us share this on our site.
At The Business Show yesterday we attended a useful workshop from SEO agency GO UP. The team were kind enough to share with us not just how great their agency was, but tips for small business owners about what SEO they can do for ourselves. Throughout the presentation they reinforced our view that actually there is a lot that small business owners (and their helpers) can do for themselves and they do not always need the help of an SEO agency.
SEO is something that many small business owners can be frightened of. Like most advances in technology (e.g. social media) they know it is something they should be doing, but are not always sure how to do it. This is where SEO agencies come in – they can come and do it for you (at a cost of course). In the past this has been effective but with changes to the Google Algorithms, there is an emerging consensus that SEO – at least in its’ traditional sense – is dead. Google has become more and more sophisticated and the tactics once used are no longer as effective and in some cases can even cause you Google penalties.
Google is trying to create a better user experience all the time, delivering credible search results from reputable companies that provide services that searchers actually want. To that end, Google now rewards proper content, written for human beings not just search engines. The days of keyword stuffing are gone! That is not to say there aren’t still clever ways of making your website, communications and entire online presence SEO friendly, but above all it is about providing information that people want, in a user friendly way. It is about looking from the outside in at what your customers or web browsers actually want (and in some cases, need!). To that end, you might have lots of fabulous, high resolution images on your site showcasing your products or services, but if it takes your website too long to load them Google and your users will switch off.
This is where modern day marketing comes in. We believe in doing the right things to make your website work for you – be it writing relevant and interesting blog pots for you, running your social media accounts, managing online PR campaigns which drive relevant back links to your site or delivering website build projects that integrate SEO right from the start. All these things help build your ‘digital footprint’, which will in turn helps deliver Google rankings that actually work. We work with the Google system to deliver the top quality information that Google and your users are looking for. In turn, this generates greater efficiency for you and your business.
For more information or you would like to talk to one of our SEO specialists contact us at hello@www.thrivestudios.co.uk