Content Marketing Strategist

Today’s blog post has been written by the incredibly knowledgeable SEO expert and copywriter, Suzy Stanton, founder of Wish Freelance Writing.

Suzy specialises in helping small business owners and entrepreneurs improve their website’s visibility so that it attracts the right people and brings in more leads and sales.

She’s also the editor of We Made a Wish adoption and parenting magazine. She’s mum to two beautiful sisters and is never far from a cup of tea and a good book.

In today’s post, Suzy shares her simple actions you can take and why persuasive copywriting is so important to drive actions and sales.

Simple website visibility tactics

Hearing the words “search engine optimisation” or SEO often sends small business owners and entrepreneurs into a cold sweat. Many of the people I talk to about it say they think it’s too complicated and time consuming to do anything about and so they ignore it.

And do you know what? It can be. If you want to delve into the detail of crawling, scratching and minification, go for it. 

But you don’t need to, to get your website seen by the people you want to work with. And if you don’t make sure it’s visible to the people you want to work with, you’re leaving money on the table because once you’ve got strong foundations in place, your website will continue to attract new leads and increase sales in the longer term making it a valuable marketing tool.

At it’s core, SEO is about connecting with the people you want to work with. It’s the shop window into your business, showcasing what you’re about and how you can solve a pain point for potential clients, whether that’s with a product or service.

If you were walking down your local high street, you’d be attracted to the shops that show you they sell the products you’re looking to buy. But you’d walk straight passed ones that are in darkness with no signs or window displays.

It’s the same with SEO. 

You can have a beautiful website that’s packed full of wonderful content and brilliant products or services, but it won’t attract the people who are looking to buy what you’re selling if they don’t know it’s there.

So, how do you make sure your website is visible to the people you want to work with?

Choose the right words

The most important tactic to improve your website’s visibility is to make sure you’re using the right words. They are the ones your customers and potential new clients type into search engines to find a solution to a problem they have.

If your website doesn’t contain those words, your ideal clients won’t find you. And that will mean your website languishes in the lower pages of search results and you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your business.

To make sure you’re using the right ones, spend some time writing a list of all of the words and phrases that come to mind when you think about what you do. Then add them to a search engine like Google and click on some of the sites that your search brings up. Look at where those websites use their keywords and if they’re relevant to you, make sure you’re using them.

If you use Google, scroll down the first results page and you’ll see a heading “People also search for” which will show you other search terms similar to the one you’ve added. This gives you a great insight into what other keywords and phrases people are using to find a website like yours.

Simple website visibility tactics: Make it easy

Make sure it’s easy for people to find your website and navigate around it to find what they’re looking for:

• add a website link to all of your social media bios and somewhere in your newsletter if you have one. 
• Add internal links (links that take the reader to another page on your site) to blog posts and all pages so the reader can find other relevant content and information easily.
• Make sure your site is easy to navigate with a clear menu and, if possible, prices and details of how to book your services.
• Add links to specific pages in social media stories or posts so that people can easily click and read what you’re talking about.

Build your authority

Using your words to attract search engines is only half of the battle when it comes to improving your website’s visibility. They act as matchmakers by finding the right websites to show to people using their search tools. And they’ll only show your website to your ideal clients if they think you know what you’re talking about.

Search engines use things like the quality of your blog posts, how long people stay on your site, and the number of links back from other reputable websites to decide how much authority they’re going to give you and therefore how high up in results pages you’ll appear.

One of the best ways to get more quality backlinks is to write guest blog posts for other businesses. Those businesses don’t have to be in the same field as you, they could be owned by people you admire or who live locally to you. But you need to make sure that your post is adding some value for their audience. 

Spend some time looking at the websites of some of the businesses you like, see what style of blog posts they publish and think of what you could write about that adds value. Then approach the owners and either offer to write a guest post or a blog swap where they write one for you too. The beauty of a blog swap is that by adding the link to your business in the post, you both get a backlink.

How I can help

If you’d like regular tips to help you improve your website’s visibility, I’d love you to join The SEO Club, my free weekly newsletter. It’s full of tips, chat and the odd bit of dating banter for good measure (who knew dating and SEO had a lot in common?!). You’ll get my free download Start Selling with SEO when you subscribe to help you start taking action to get your website seen by the people you want to work with. 

About Suzy…