My current web design client Eleanor Bell, PhD came to me recently asking if I did Search Engine Optimization. Eleanor is a life coach specializing in internal family Systems and Hakomi. Eleanor mentioned that her site was not appearing when searching for her main coaching approach – internal family systems.
For large companies, SEO is a tedious, highly complex discipline, but sole proprietor and small business websites just need about 10 completed tasks to get 90% of their SEO goals accomplished. Depending on your business type these 10 tasks are slightly different. For example, if you your personality is a big part of your service, having a video bio of you is important. Eleanor has not done this yet, and we are in discussion, about creating one. Other businesses may not need a video.
Here are those 7 tasks:
- Great content containing your relevant keywords. While writing the content for you pages or blog, think of what people are searching for in relation to your services. In Eleanor’s case, she knows people are searching for internal family systems therapy. The content she writes should highlight that keyword term in the titles and paragraphs of her pages and blog. How do you know what people are searching related to your business? Simply type in Google’s search bar and wait for suggestions. These suggestions will also be the most highly searched terms. Take it one step further by using Google Trends and research the volume these terms are being searched. For your most important keyword phrases, make a page or blog entry dedicated to that keyword phrase.
- Have external sites link to your site using your relevant keywords. Link internally from page to page those important keywords. It’s easy to link out to external websites and think that helps your SEO, but it does not, because Google and other search engines know that can be misused. Instead, find colleagues with similar businesses as you to write about you, and link to you. Even though I do not do coaching, it is still a big plus for Eleanor’s business for me to link to her using her most important coaching term internal family systems therapy. Although, this too short not be overdone, because the all knowing search engines may see this as artificially manipulated. Less effective, but still a good supplemental strategy is to link from one page to another within your site. In the case of Eleanor’s site, she may mention Hakomi on the home page. To link Hakomi to an internal page that talks more about Hakomi helps the reader better understand the term, and slightly improves SEO.
- Link these Google services to your site. You need to have a site map cataloged in the Google search engines. To best do that, if you don’t have a gmail email, get one. This is your easiest gateway to signing up with Google Console. Next create your Google Analytics account and put the provided code in to your website to track visitors. Finally, create a Google My Business account, and create a profile. This will be yet another way for people to find your website. There are many tutorials on how to do these three tasks.
- Take out an ad in print or online. In the beginning of having a website for your new business, you are not getting much traffic, if any. Traffic to your site boosts your SEO. To give the visits to your site a little kick, try taking an ad out on Google, or your social media platform of choice, or newspaper or magazine relevant to your business or location.
- Create a bio video. Creating a video is essentially is a pitch for you and your business. For many businesses, people like to see how you look and hear how you talk. Especially, if you are a big part of the service. Even though this article has been referencing many Google products, I’m not an affiliate of any. These free Google products simply help you with your business, not just SEO. From my research, Google rewards your business with good search results when you use YouTube and link it to your site. So, to complete the video making process, start a YouTube Channel, and upload the video to that channel. Who knows, you may like doing it so much, you might start creating others.
- Start a blog to encourage dynamic content. I was skeptical of this tactic because I was often judging the short term effects. But, for my clients like CBT Westport, their blog has increased their visitors 5 fold! They consistently wrote an article twice a month. In two years, their 20 visits a day went up to 100 a day! I only recommend starting a blog if you like to write. Those my clients who did not like to write, may have started a blog, but they didn’t follow through and consistently write.
- Write custom title tags, page urls, and image alt tags. Title tags are what you see when you hover over the browser tab for your site. Your page urls are the few words that follow the forward slash after your domain name. And, your image alt tags are the descriptions of your images for accessibility. These is the one time you are entering content that most people will not notice, but the search engines do. Especially your title tags. Make sure those do not just say “home” or “about”. They should contain those crucial keywords that people are searching.
Search Engine Optimization is not a one size fits all discipline. But, if you start with these 7 tasks, with you do it, or hire someone, it will be the foundation for you getting successful search engine results.
