SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. If you’ve got a business website, it’s something you need to know at least the basics about.

You can have the most beautiful website, and fabulous products or services. But if your copy doesn’t contain the words people are looking for in search engines, very few people will find it. That’s where SEO comes in. Put simply, SEO is the process of making your website more visible in search engines. The more visible it is, the higher up in search results it will appear. And the higher up your website is, the more likely people are to click and look at what you are selling.

Over half of website traffic comes from organic searches as opposed to referrals from social media or other channels. So it’s important to make sure your site is working hard for your business and showing up in searches. Many business owners find SEO scary and overwhelming. It can be complicated if you want to get into the fine details about it. But the basics are straightforward.

Here are three simple things you can do today to help your website get seen by the right people:

Keywords

Keywords and the ones people type into search engines when they have a problem to solve. For example, if you live in Gateshead and are looking for a copywriter, you’d probably type in something like “copywriting services in Gateshead.” “Copywriting services, Gateshead” appear in my page title and the meta description. That means if anyone is looking for a copywriter near where I live, I’ll show up in a search using those words.

Check your website to make sure your keywords are up-to-date. Do they reflect what your business is? It may be that you’ve tweaked your services recently so check that your keywords reflect that. If they aren’t there already, make sure your keywords appear in your tagline and meta data. These tell people what you do and what you’re website is about.

Make sure the words appear in some headings and page titles too. But be careful not to over-use them as that will actually harm your credibility with search engines meaning you don’t show up in searches.

Broken links

Naturally linking to other websites helps to build up your authority with search engines. It shows your website can be trusted as long as you’re linking to other sites appropriately. Broken links happen when the site you’re linking to takes down the page you’re sending people to. This gives you an “Error 404” page. Having lots of broken links can affect how search engines view your site. They give the impression that your site is out-of-date and not being updated regularly.

There are plugins you can use to check for and identify broken links. However, use those with caution as they can slow down the speed your site loads. You can also check on websites such as Broken Link Checker which is free to use. Add checking broken links into your weekly schedule so that it doesn’t become unmanageable.

Improve your SEO with your images

Adding images to your website helps to make it look nice and breaks up the text in blog posts. However, images can do more than just make your website look pretty. If you fill in the ALT text you are helping the images to be picked up by search engines. Without them, they’re invisible.

The ALT text describes to search engines what the image is. They can also include your key word too, as long as the images relates to this. So, try and source images that reflect your keywords. For example, I tend to use stock images to add into my blog posts. If I’m writing about how to write a blog post, I might use an image of someone typing on their laptop. When I’m describing the image in the ALT text I could then use my keywords of “blog writing” to describe what the person is doing in the image.

Think about the things someone would be searching for when they’re looking for what you’re writing about. And then use those terms in your ALT text.

How I can help

If you’re looking for more tips about improving your SEO, why not subscribe to my newsletter Wish Weekly? It’s full of advice, ideas and motivation to help you get the words on your website working hard for your business. I’ve also got a free Facebook Group Content Writing for Business Owners which is a space to connect with other business owners while you learn.

If you’re struggling to identify your keywords or just don’t have time to do any research, have a look at my keyword research package. I’ll do the research for you and come up 10 words and suggestions about where you should use them.