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Social Media
If you haven’t heard of social media yet or the benefits of having your business on platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, where have you been? Social Media sites are engagement platforms, that means they are not solely for broadcasting a message. If you want to get the full potential out of social media you have to treat it as a method of engaging with potential/existing customers and influencers within your industry. There are many methods you can use to do this depending on your industry, however content creation is an excellent method for all industries, whether that be an article, video or images. Consider what is best for your target audience. The overriding aim is to get people interacting with you. On top of this social media platforms such as Facebook now have ads, which means you can get your promotions or news out to a local audience.
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Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is a recognised method of increasing your rankings in search engines like Google, the higher up you appear for a search term the more traffic you will receive. An estimated $613 billion is expected to be spent on SEO this year worldwide, a number that has tripled since 2008. There are a few basic principles with SEO. First of all, the on-page content needs to be relevant to your keywords, this includes website titles, headers and images. Naming them correctly is important. Avoid spamming your site with the keywords you want to rank for however, Google is clever enough to notice this and you could end up being penalised for i. The second principle is gaining links from relevant sites. Are there websites in your industry that allow guest posting or article submission? Seek those opportunities out. A valuable link will add a lot of weight to the relevance of your site. Make sure to keep track of your search traffic through Google Analytics to see improvements.
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Pay Per Click Advertising (Google Adwords)
Paid ads appear in Google at the top and sides of searches. These ads are pay per click as you will pay Google each time someone clicks on that ad through to your site. There are ranking algorithms here too, just like for SEO, the relevance is important. The more relevant the ad the less it will cost to appear and to rank highly. Adwords can make your website appear instantly on Google search results and can receive great return on investment if done correctly.
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Content Creation
As mentioned earlier, creating content can be a great way to get you noticed. It has many benefits for social media and SEO. An article or video in its own right is a great way to get people interested in your products or services. If that article is written well and targeted correctly it can achieve great results. The rule here is to consider your target audience and what makes them tick. Combine it with SEO and social media and you can benefit hugely. Google likes fresh content so the more content you create the higher you are likely to rank for any terms relevant in the content. Share the content on social media and you can reach a bigger audience and even get it to influencers in your industry who just might share that content. Bonus!
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Google Local Results
Google Local or Google Business is a tool used to add your business details to the local results that appear if you are looking for something locally. For example, if you search “pub West Kirby” the top local result is West Kirby Tap. Great for them as it means anyone in the area looking for a pub will see West Kirby Tap first. Local results are highly targeted and are the most likely to convert for local businesses. They provide key information such as opening times, menus, contact details and address for GPS. As with organic listing and Adwords there are ranking factors which decide where your business will appear, relevance is key as well as content. The more details and images you can provide, the more likely it is you will rank highly for a chosen term.
I’m happy to give advice and help to local businesses in Wirral and can offer my freelance services for any businesses looking to for expert services to improve their online presence, check out my site SEO in Wirral. Feel free to leave a comment or get in touch with me on Twitter for any advice.
