Search Engine Optimisation for Business Website

Does anyone know much about this?

My partner has 3 excellent websites to promote the 3 types of clients she works with, but putting in obvious search terms to Google doesn't result in her sites appearing in the first few pages. When it does appear it's often not the 'front page' of the website that you click through to.
Neither of us really know enough about this kind of this, so I'm hoping for some guidance to at least give us an idea of the size of the issue. If anyone can give answers to the following it'd be really helpful!
1) Do you need to get an 'expert' to basically do the things that make the website have higher visibility? Is this expensive?
2) Is there any other kind of payment involved in pushing your site up the ratings? Who do you pay?
3) Aside from adding search terms into the website creator SEO terms (which is what we have done, and it doesn't seem to do a lot, even after a few months), is there anything else we shold be doing?

Many thanks, guys!

This might be helpful:

How Google Search Works.

That's really interesting, thanks.

I feel like we must be doing something wrong, and need some assistance from a professional I think. It seems you don't 'buy' your way up the rankings, but you have to work out how to amend your site so it gets relevant hits - without resorting to 'blackhat' techniques. I think that's what we need help with...

Can you link the websites? There is some easy technical stuff you can do that is a good start, but essentially you just need to create amazing content.

I wouldn't recommend paying for SEO tbh.

While seo can be useful there are a lot of cowboys so be careful. Also the tech is quickly changing. Make sure your up to date with content mark up is up to date and get links on relivant websites. Also regularly update your site.

Thanks, I will have to look up what 'content mark up' is!

OK, so if we don't regularly update it will fall down the rankings?

Here is one of them, any comments are welcome...

http://www.kariancommunications.com/

and another:
http://www.vocalsolutions-uk.com/

The pages have quite a bit of content on, which is great.

-Make sure all of that content is unique, Google doesn't like duplicate content.
-Assign one keyword to each page. The more long tailed and specific the easier it is to rank. (for example "used cars toyota london" would be easier than "used cars").
-Then make sure that keyword is inserted naturally into the content a few times (the closer to the top the better. Also headers are great. However always put the quality of the content first.)
-Make sure the meta titles contain just that keyword (I usually put "Keyword | Sitename").
-Add in great meta descriptions. This doesn't affect the rankings, but is used to convince people to click on your site.
-If possible make sure the site loads fast and is mobile friendly.

Just doing that semi technical stuff should get you starting to rank. Just don't pick too competitive keywords.

After you do that, try and add in at the very very least one new piece of content every month (a blog is perfect). That gives you a way of assigning more keywords, as well as letting Google know the is always being updated. Again, prioritize content quality over keyword optimisation.

Also capitalise on internal linking opportunities. Say you assigned the keyword, "Used Cars" to your homepage and then in one of your blog you said "Japanese used cars are so much better than the European rust buckets, they actually start in the morning!" You would add a link to the homepage from the used car keyword. People usually overlook internal linking and it is a great way to easily help the rankings.


However before you do any of that, get Google Analytics on the site. How else will you know if you are getting increases in traffic?
Also even if you get the traffic, I am doubtful it will get conversions. The colours are quite dull and the pages are blobs of boring text. You would need to do some work on making it easier for the user to see your USPs, and directed to the call to action.

1cmanny1 wrote:....absolutely loads of really useful stuff....

lexman wrote:....tons of really useful stuff....

hideous_enigma wrote:....piles of really useful stuff....

Thanks so much! This is exactly the kind of help we needed. Based on this we can definitely do some things to improve the site, once we've done some googling on how to do the things you've mentioned.

We do get enquiries via the website, but until now I've been baffled at how people find it in the first place... but I take on board your comments about the colours, text, etc.

Thanks for your time, everyone. Any more comments are welcome.


GRCade

Best to work on it from two ways
On site SEO - internal linking, updating content, sorting out keywords and target search terms (worth looking into search term traffic etc)
Off site SEO - links to your site from 3rd party websites, so either people linking to blog content, or maybe customer reviews linking to your site etc

There is plenty on the web on both and what is best to do etc

Sorry for the large image, but there are a number of helpful beginner-level infographics floating around the web. This one is pretty good to start with:

On the first site in particular you have far too much text per page, Google is not able to lock into particular keywords that are most important. Less really is more and I won't even get into design terms. You also have repetitive and duplicate content. You need to consider your content structure and how content fits into broader categories and sub categories that form the structure or architecture of your site. Have simpler pages higher in the site architecture linking to deeper articles that include more detail on more specific subjects.

Good internal linking structure means sensible navigational links and anchor (link) text that chain pages together and also linking relevant terms within pages to relevant pages.

Two simple improvements you can make to your site is to target one keyword per page in the META title element and also rename the pages from 1,2,3.html to contain matching descriptive terms instead. Separate the words with hyphens like my-keyword-target.html

Also make use of the <H1> and subsequent subheading elements to break down your content into paragraps denoted by descriptive keywords.

META description is very important to summarise the page in the search results (for properly optimised Web pages this is where that text comes from) and to include a call to action to encourage people to click. Including keywords in this text is also counted.

Those are some on site issues to address that are quite bad. Off site you could set up social network pages to link to your content and you could add the ability for people to like, +1 and tweet pages. This helps build up your external links and social authority over time. Just setting up the networks and linking back to you site in the bios like on Twitter can be a good start.

With regards to paid search you are looking at Google Ad Words where you can allocate a budget to pay for sponsored listings at the top of Google listings. You can spend as much or as little as you want, and it may be a better short term investment than seo and can also help build up links to your site.

Link acquisition and like/tweet acquisition is seen as spam and definitely something to avoid as this can actually damage your search ranking. You need to work hard to earn genuine links from relevant websites, or you can start by getting listings on business directories or asking previous clients to review you on their blog or testimonial page for example.

These factors of on site quality content that is structured sensibly and in a way that Google can understand, and off site links and shares that "vouch" for your content are necessary to rank anywhere in the top 50 places on Google or even 50 pages.

Using techniques like this you can improve your search ranking within 3 to 6 weeks, but bear in mind depending on how competitive the keyword(s) you want to rank for are, that is, how well established other properties already are and will continue to be (such as having thousands of links or likes of shares), you may not rank anywhere close to what you want. That is just the reality of the competition. If this is the case, you are probably wasting your time and need to go for pay per click (AdWords), or choose less competitive keywords that are more of a niche. Otherwise, look at alternative digital marketing strategies like video marketing or social media (both of which have paid options).

None of this is a quick win which is why the industry is expensive, it requires a great deal of human intervention, admin, content creation, research and monitoring. It is absolutely possible to rank on page 1 for competitive terms but it requires investment and some tactics.

A great resource is Moz.com for some tools and a great beginners guide.

Thank you so much guys, this is an incredible response.

I've got some additional time on my hands that I wasn't anticipating (which I'll post about in the jobs thread when it's 'made official' ), so I'm going to spend that time with my partner sorting through all of this wealth of information and coming up with a plan.

Again, GRCade