Hey! Aaron here from Full Circle Design. We help companies design, build, and develop their online presence and optimize user experience for both web and product. We also give you some great tips and advice here in our blog to help you get the most out of your website. Below I have put together a pretty detailed step-by-step SEO (search engine optimized) checklist that will help your customers find you and ultimately buy your products or services.
Website Domain
Ok so let’s get started. The first thing you need to do before you publish your website is to choose a domain. Your domain should align with your business brand and sector. It should be short simple and easy to remember. Your domain should also include what you do. As an example, we here at Full Circle Design provide a full scope of design services from Website Design to UI/UX design to Branding, so our name Full Circle Design encompasses everything we do and is search engine friendly.
Keyword Research
Once you have your killer domain name picked it’s time to check out those keywords. Keywords are the words customers will type in Google’s search bar when they search for your services. There are many different types of keywords but for now, we will just focus on broad keywords. You want to find your business sector-specific keywords that will help search engines rank your site higher when searching. A tip for choosing your keywords is to try to think about your customers and how they might search (not how you might search). So, if you are an accountant based in Cork and you want to work with start-ups, then you could use keywords like ‘accounts for start-ups in Cork’. A few tools to help you in your search are Google’s keyword planner, semrush.com and wordstream.com.
Website Content
Your website content should be created with your keywords in mind, try to align your content to help search engines rank you when users search for your services. Think of how your services or products align with how your customers may search, and try not to be too elaborate in your descriptions. Remember to speak to your users in an easy-to-follow and understandable tone. A great tip here is to search for similar businesses in your sector, and see how they are marketing their services. If they are showing up when you are searching, they are doing all the right things!
(It’s not stealing, it’s taking inspiration 😉.)
Site Structure
Your next step is to create a clear site structure for your website. A good site structure allows search engines like Google to find and rank your website pages accordingly. To do this, start with a pen and paper or even open notes on your phone. Write down what you would like displayed on your website, then group them in a website content structure.
Now, before you are ready to launch your site. Include your site structure as you listed previously. Check that all pages are titled correctly with informative descriptions, does your website have an easy-to-use menu in both your header and footer? Make sure you have your contact details displayed. It should be easy for the user to find your contact number or search for your office or store. All of these will help you improve your website's SEO.
Another great tip is to Include internal links in your website footer that allows for more user-friendly navigation. Now that you have your site structure set up, go to your website menus, double-check that your internal links direct the user to the correct pages and again, make sure your pages are titled correctly (we don’t want to see any www.yourcompany/blank, this kills your organic search potential).
Image Names and Tags
Ok, now you have your website set up, all content is in place, and you have picked some killer images and photography for your site. When uploading images to your website, make sure all images are named correctly. (We do not, I repeat, We Do Not want to see IMG53512772.jpg!). Include image tags that describe what the image is, what is in the image and what it could relate to. This will help search engines define and indicate relevant content on your site.
Time to blog
This next step requires a bit of effort but can really benefit your long-time growth online. Create a blog on your website. A Blog that is relevant to your sector highlights your services and gives great advice that really helps your organic search results. When writing a blog think about how you can help your audience not how you can sell to them. The point is to provide your knowledge, for free, to help them grow, and in turn, will help your business grow too. A pro tip here is to give away as much great advice as you can. It may take time for leads to come in but if you can position yourself as an expert in your field, it builds trust and trust builds clients.
Now that you have a killer website, optimized for search engines that features great advice in your business sector, it's time to build an audience. Using social media and targeted ads works great for this. Treat your social media like your blog. Think about how you can provide your audience with as much advice as you can because helping others is fun right?
Also, don’t be scared to feature your work here too. Show your audience what you have to offer but don’t make it all about you. Explain what problems you solved for your clients or if you selling products, how your product can help them.
Targeted ads are also a great tool to drive traffic to your website and are really a whole other category we will talk about in another post. Targeted ads work great when you have a defined niche to target, setting up an ad just to showcase your work may bring up your views but it won’t get you any sales. Think about who your clients are, where they are and what problems you can help them solve. From there, create an ad for that specific audience and we can nearly guarantee you should see results.
Get in touch
Have you any tips or suggestions that you use to increase website traffic or turn website visitors into leads? Or maybe you want to get in touch with us to see how we can help your business grow online.
Get in touch with me by email – aaron@fullcircledesign.ie