Introduction
In this article we will cover:
– What does local SEO mean?
– Why you should set-up a Google My Business account
– Why you should optimise your Google My Business account
– Why you should build business citations
– Why the “NAP” information shouldn’t be conflicting
– Why you need to write quality content marketing
– Why you need to build very high-quality backlinks
– Why you need a really good Bristol SEO Agency like Pack Digital Marketing
It really doesn’t matter whether you are a butcher, a baker, or indeed the candlestick maker, a lot of businesses today rely on their company website to help to generate more sales for the company.
Whether the business uses PPC, that’s Google’s Pay Per Click, Social Media Advertising, on Facebook, Twitter or lets say on LinkedIn, yet there’s also another way, and thats via local seo, and organic seo, and we specialise in this type of online marketing, in matter of fact, a lot of businesses from the great city of Bath, through to Clifton Bristol use or agency, because, we don’t like to blow our own trumpet, but we are really good at what we do.
Of course some businesses in Bristol rely on their website more than others, for example some businesses might have 100% of their sales coming via their organic SEO, others less so.
So, for a lot of start-up businesses, and established companies in Bristol, there are normally will be sat in their office or business premises, and it will be scratching their heads thinking about how do they improve their local SEO? How do you get on the first page of Google?
So, how to generate more sales?
Well, you’ve come to the right place, as we are a well-known seo company, we serve businesses right across Bristol.
We have SEO consultants that have a vast amount of experience, in matter of fact some of us now have over 10 years implementing quality white hat SEO.
So, we are therefore in a very good place, to advise you on how to improve your SEO.
What exactly do we mean when we say Bristol SEO?
When you think about SEO, you have to think about it in a way where it’s either “national” or its “local”.
You have to think about it in this way, quite simply because implementing national SEO across a whole country is a lot more difficult, much more time-consuming and often more costly then it would be to implement what we refer to as “local SEO”. Now when we say Bristol SEO, obviously what we mean is local SEO.
Now, if you think that this form of marketing (local SEO) is very quick, and is going to generate you more sales overnight, well, then you very much mistaken!
It is a very slow process indeed, in matter of fact think of a snails pace, and you more or less there with how slow organic seo and local seo, can sometimes be in terms of us helping a company in Bristol to improve their sales.
Now, you might be thinking, what on earth is this company saying? Why would they say that this form of marketing is very slow to see SEO results? Why would they say that things move at a snails pace? Why, would they say their good, if it takes ages to actually see more sales?
Well, quite simply put it’s often the truth- sure a lot of businesses might not want to hear it, and there might be 1 million other SEO companies out there that try to grab the business by saying that they can do it faster, cheaper, and claim to be the best, but often SEO is a very slow process, if its done right.
That’s why we say things can sometimes move at a snails pace, so, for example, lets say your a builder in Bristol, your now looking for local seo companies, you want the work to be quality, white hat, and must follow “Google’s Webmaster Guidelines”, so you might hire us. Yet, sometimes it can take us between 6 to 12 months, to improve a companies seo, to the point where it starts to make more sales.
The reason that it is this slow, is rather simple, being on the first page of Google, as you can imagine is highly valuable to most companies, if not transformative for some Bristol businesses in some business sectors.
And as the old saying goes, “things that are worth having, don’t come easy”, so with local seo, it’s not often the walk in the park, it’s often a lot of work- huge amounts of effort, and you also need to know your stuff.
So, the point that we are trying to make is this, whether your a used car dealer in Bristol, a solicitor, or you sell let’s say thousands of electric bikes online, you are often up against a massive amount of competition, and hundreds of other businesses, which also want to be on the first page of Google.
So, your fighting for say 10 places, within the “organic business results”, and sometimes only 3 places in the “Google My Business” results.
So, obviously another business, lets say a direct competitor in Bristol, is not going to go down without a fight- meaning that they will want to also improve, or hold their position on Google, for as long as possible, as they will want to stay on the first page for as long as possible.
As they also want to generate more sales as well in Bristol, so any business that thinks therefore that seo is easy, that they can get on the first page of the organic results of Google, with a minimal amount of effort- well quite frankly is not looking at the hurdle that needs to be scaled in a realistic way.
First thing on the list, make sure that your website is well designed, before you even get on the phone to the SEO company…
So let’s get down to the nuts and bolts of the situation, how do you start improving a Bristol companies SEO? Well if you were to ask various different agencies, they might have a different list of tasks which they carry out in order to begin the organic or local SEO process.
However, obviously we can only speak for what we would do at this marketing agency, and the first thing that we would do is, we would look at your companies website, and we would often make a few slight design changes, but sometimes the design of the site might not be up to scratch at all, so we might not even be able to be optimise the website, sometimes, until its had some design work completed.
So, sometimes the website needs to go to a web designer in Bristol, to either be improved, or if we can work with the website in it’s current design, and just make a few changes, then we will do that.
By far the biggest problem that we see at this stage, is that the website has what is called “duplicate content”, in that the designers may have copied and pasted product descriptions, and other text from another website which causes SEO problems, that’s before you even begin the SEO process.
So, sometimes the first thing that we have to do, is we need to get our web designers to make a few changes, or sometimes the copywriters need to add new text to the website.
Because there will be some SEO companies out there that say they can apply SEO to any website, but you have to think of the website in the same way would a race car.
Now, you obviously, if your a race car driver, want to win the race, yet your up against many other high-performance machines, so if the car is excessively heavy, the engine is not tuned, and let’s say its low on oil, then you are entering a vehicle into a race, that is simply not going to stand up to the competition.
This is exactly the same when it comes to trying to get a company website onto the first page of Google, that has not been correctly designed, for example in might not have hardly any written text, so trying rank that website and the main pages will be extremely difficult, as its far better to improve the design slightly if it needed, before you start the organic SEO process.
Set up a Google My Business Account
The next thing often do is set-up what is called a Google My Business Account.
You need to also add your companies address, phone number and also name of the business, this is what is referred to as the “NAP details”.
The NAP details are important, as they distinguish your business from all the others in Bristol and in Bath England, and they act like the unique identifier for your business. This is why you shouldn’t have conflicting business citations, which we will come onto a bit later on.
Optimise your Google My Business Account
We wouldn’t recommend setting up a Google My Business Account, if you are in an absolute rush to say get down the pub on a Friday afternoon!
Because it’s really important that you set this up right, you shouldn’t therefore think of it as a 10 minute task, and that’s it job completed lets get down the pub, nope, you should spend the time to make sure, its set up so it has as much detail added about your company as possible.
Shout from the rooftops where your business is located
Now when we say shout from the rooftops where your businesses is located, obviously we don’t mean literally, what we mean is instead, what is needed is to set up “business citations”, these are sometimes free, other ones you might have to pay for.
You should write on them your businesses “NAP details”, again that’s the name of the business, its address, and also the phone number.
And you should aim to build as many quality business citations as you possibly can, because this reinforces your businesses “NAP details”, and to a limited extent if done right, can help to improve the organic SEO.
However, don’t think by setting up say 10 business citations, that overnight your business is going to soar to the top of Google , because that is very unlikely to happen, the effect on the SEO is often rather limited, but business citations, are still an important part of the organic and local SEO process.
But what we are trying to say is don’t expect miracles, in terms of improving your local seo, as this is just one part of the process and there is a lot more to do.
Make sure that the business citation details are consistent:
The next thing you should do is make sure that all of you Bristol SEO citations are all consistent, because let’s face it, you might have got a bit tired when typing the address and got it wrong, on another citation, you might have not got phone number right ,and on a different one you might have even written the business name incorrectly? This causes what are called conflicting business citations.
Another time that this can happen is when you move business address, what happens is let’s say the business was located in Clifton, Bristol and let’s say you’ve since moved to Aztec West into a bigger office premises, a common mistake that a lot of companies make is that they don’t update their business citations and this causes “conflicting citations” which can sometimes have a negative affect the new local SEO.
So, the point we are trying to make is that even when you set up business citations, they need to be managed, in to ensure that the up-to-date and they don’t conflict.
Then we would recommend adding some quality content marketing
Then once you’ve done some off-site SEO, such as building quality business citations, then its time to start thinking about writing some content marketing.
The work needs to be well thought out, it needs to address questions that your customers often have about the products or services that you sell.
Now, this often means writing a rather detailed answer, but it also needs on-site SEO added as well.
So the content marketing is not just about written text, it needs to be very high quality, this often takes a lot of time
What is content marketing?
So, this leads us on to the question of what exactly is content marketing?
Well, basically it’s a way of helping your customers with questions that they might have, this might be via a Youtube video, with a member of staff explaining about a product or a service you offer, it might be through written text, it might be through a flow diagram, however it needs to be completed to help your customers through a question that they may have.
That this might be something as simple as explaining what the return procedure for your company is, or you could be something completely more detailed such as explaining how long the electric battery lasts of on a ev vehicle
Why half baked content marketing never cuts the mustard…
Half baked content marketing never cuts the mustard!
Your businesses may think that you can write 500 words of complete waffle, and think that this can help improve your organic SEO? When in matter of fact, it could have the complete opposite effect and damage the organic SEO.
The written work needs to be focused around offering quality advice, it needs to be white hat.
Next thing, start building the backlinks
Our last we do is to start the process of building quality backlinks
Sleep eat and repeat
You might be scratching your head thinking, why has this SEO agency quoted me a high monthly rate, and in some cases, you might be thinking that is a huge amount to be paying every month?
The thing is, your competitors will often not rest in terms of trying to get their business onto the first page, and even if they are already on the first page, they may not even stop working on improving their seo, because they want to reinforce their position, because it might be valuable to them.
So with organic and also local SEO, it is a process of sleep, eat nd repeat, and by that we mean that it is continuous, and never really comes to a stop, unless you want to start dropping down the ranks.
