When it comes to visibility in business, most founders think about social media. Showing up, talking to camera, and sharing what we do.
And whilst that’s an important part of visibility, it’s not the only way. And if it’s where you’re putting all of your digital marketing eggs, it’s a recipe for a big mess on the floor if the social media platform you’re using decides you’ve done something wrong and disables your account.
If that happens (it happened to me a few months ago), you’ve lost your leads, contacts, potential clients and probably years of work.
So, how else can you make sure your business is visible to the people you want to work with?
If you’ve got a website for your business, the answer is right there.
Website visibility is the often-overlooked aspect of digital marketing. But done well, it’s an easy way to attract your dream client’s attention, show them what you do and how you can help them, effortlessly.
SEO are three letters that often make small business owners and founders run for the hills. But they’re the key to making sure your website is worth its weight and the investment you’ve put into it in terms of time and money.
What is SEO?
At its core, SEO is about attraction and connection. It’s about having the right words in the places that Google will find them; a site that’s easy to navigate, so potential clients can find what they’re looking for and make a buying decision; and having rich, engaging, human-centred content that adds value and showcases you and what you do.
It’s also about trust and showing that other websites rate you and your content by linking to it and sending their valued audience to you.
There can be a lot more to it if you want to get into the technical details of it. But you don’t need to, to attract Google’s attention and convince it to show your site to your dream clients when they’re searching for a solution to their problem.
So, how do you attract Google’s attention?
Keywords
These are the words you use to attract Google’s attention.
When someone types “how to get my baby to sleep at night” into Google at 3 am, Google looks for websites that contain that phrase to add to its search results page for that particular user.
If you’re a baby sleep specialist and don’t have those words in key places across your site, it doesn’t matter how good your services are, as Google and, therefore, your ideal client, won’t find them.
Spend 20 minutes writing down the main words that describe what you do, and then type them into a search engine. If your site comes up first, you’re doing something right! If your competitors come up first, you’re using the right words. If businesses that have nothing to do with what you do come up first, you’re using the wrong words.
Putting your words in the right places
Once you’ve got the right words, you need to make sure they’re in the best places. The key spot is your tagline. It sits underneath your site identity (website name) and, depending on the design of your site, may or may not be visible to visitors, but it is visible to Google.
For example, I run a digital adoption and parenting magazine called We Made a Wish. The site name doesn’t tell anyone what my wish and therefore the website is about, so my tagline, adoption and parenting magazine, is visible. And my main keyword is, you’ve guessed it, adoption.
The tagline is the main place search engines look to find out what a site is about, so if your keyword isn’t there, you’re invisible.
Other key places for your keywords include page names, headings and headlines, image and page descriptions and the body of your content. But the caveat to that is, it needs to be added naturally. They should be obvious to Google, but not to your reader.
How to attract Google’s attention: Content
Having a blog section that’s regularly updated with rich, engaging content that is human-centred, adds value and informs is one of the most important components you need on your website.
Despite what you may have read on social media, blogging is most definitely not dead.
It’s vital if you want to stand out above all of the noise.
Google uses it to assess the quality of your website and the level of your EEAT (experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness). Blog posts are the best way to showcase this.
Reuse content you’ve already created if you’re short on time. Put together several social media posts on the same topic, reuse newsletter content and expand it slightly, or use an app or AI tool to transcribe your podcast and turn that into a blog post.
Quality is far more important than quantity, so one, really strong, rich post a month is far better than four poor-quality posts.
If you don’t have a blog section on your website, spend 20 minutes this week researching how to add one. If you do have one, spend 20 minutes planning content for the next few weeks.
Build your authority
When other websites rate your site, they’re happy to send their valuable audience to it. And when Google sees that other sites value yours, that gives your authority score a boost.
Backlinks from other websites to yours are a brilliant way of showing Google you know what you’re talking about.
Some quick wins to boost your authority include:
- Make sure there’s a link to your website in all of your social media bios
- Add your website to your email signature
- Blog swaps and guest posts with other business owners
The SEO Dating Challenge
If you’d like to have a bit of fun with SEO and learn more about the basics, and what it has in common with dating, join my SEO Dating Challenge. Once you’ve joined, you’ll get emails over three days that look at attraction, keeping your new date interested, and building a lasting relationship with them.
The SEO Dating Challenge is free to join and a great starting point to help you get your website visible to search engines and your dream clients.
Suzy is a copywriter and the creator and editor of We Made a Wish digital adoption and parenting magazine. She’s on a mission to simplify SEO and show small business owners and entrepreneurs how to move their websites from invisible to irresistible so they attract the right people and increase sales. As a former lawyer, she knows how to cut through the noise and focus on action that sees results.
Suzy is based in the North East of England and lives with her husband and two daughters, who grew in her heart, not her belly. She’s a redhead, came 5th in the World in Sports Acrobatics eleventy billion years ago and loves a cup of tea and a good crime thriller.You can find out all about her SEO services and resources from her website or follow her on Instagram.
Content Marketing Strategist 