SEO tips from Norwich

Having worked with a broad range of SMEs in Norwich, UK, we have learnt that while most small business owners are happy to manage their own websites, they see search engine optimisation as a bit of a 'black art' that they don't know what to do with. But there are a number of simple things that every small business can do to their own website to help them rank for relevant keywords.
As well as offering SEO in Norwich, we have created a straightforward SEO Report called our SEO Road Map that we tailor for each of our clients. This includes a complete keyword and competitor analysis, and lays out the steps that the company needs to take to rank well for relevant keywords - in layman's terms.
But even without an in-depth report there are steps you can take to optimise your own website.

The first thing to do is to find the right keywords for each of the main pages of your website. We recommend getting to know Google's Keyword Tool - you can use it for free and don't need to have an AdWords account to use it (although having one does give you access to some more detailed functions). Remember to change the location and language fields in 'Advanced Tools' - it will automatically go to US and English, so if you're over this side of the pond it's important to change it to United Kingdom.

You can enter more than one keywords in the box, one search term on each line. We recommend looking at "long-tail" keywords - these are keywords that are longer and more precise, for example "conservatory builders in Norwich" rather than "conservatory". Have a play with a range of phrases - try to imagine what people searching for your products or services might be typing in.

After you press "search", go to the left side of the screen and select "[Exact]" - this means that you will be shown how many people are searching for the exact phrase and will give you a better idea of what to search for.

The Google AdWords tool is aimed at people advertising on Google, so that "competition" bar refers to people competing for AdWords space - but it is a good general signifier of how competitive a keyword is.

The best keyword for small businesses is long tail, highly relevant and uncompetitive - have a play and see what you can find!

Having chosen a keyword for each of the important pages on your website, there are several key places that you should place your keywords on your website - this is what is known as "on page search engine optimisation". Depending on your website's content management system (CMS), you will have access to some or all of these. The sections are:
- the page title
- the page's URL
- the metadata description
- headers and titles on the page which are designated with H-tags in your HTML
- the alt-tags that accompany images on a page (although you have to be careful that alt-tags are relevant to the image; Google has been known to sandbox websites with stuffed alt-tags)
- the body text

Basically, you want to get your keywords into as many of these as possible. You may not have access to all of them - but you can make sure that the keywords are in place in as many of these as possible.

I'll have to go into more detail on each of these individually in a later article - but you should be able to find them in your CMS and make some small changes which will make a real difference!

Whatever you do, make sure that your website doesn't look like it is simply aimed at search engine bots%u2026 it needs to appeal to the reader who finds it as well as meeting the requirements of the Google bots. That's why our team offering SEO in Norwich combines SEO experts and professional copywriters - there's no point bringing people to a website that doesn't speak to them!